Architecture and Landscape: in Celebration of Cornelia Hahn Oberlander
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Behind a hemlock hedge and overlooking the forest is a home designed and built by the late Cornelia Hahn Oberlander and Peter Oberlander, Canada’s preeminent modernist landscape architect and urban planner. Ravine House was the second home designed for their family, a collaboration with architect Barry Downs, and the winning concept in a 1968 competition with a brief to minimize disturbance to the ravine and its ecology. Three terraces negotiate the complex site topography, as the land slopes gradually on its longitudinal axis following the street, while its transverse axis dives steeply towards Salish Creek. To circumvent the need for a conventional building pad, the house is suspended like a bridge spanning between concrete footings, lifting the living space off the ground and nestling the home amongst the tree canopy. It’s a remarkable home that is informed by the landscape and engages with it on multiple levels.
While the architecture and landscape design of Ravine House might have remained more or less static over years of occupancy, the landscape around it has undergone a series of transformations reflecting the growth of its human and nonhuman inhabitants. The modernist structure that once demarcated the edge of the forest has been enveloped by trees and shrubs that have overtaken it in size, inverting the scales of architecture and landscape. Native and introduced planting have grown interspersed in a naturalized state, in a guided yet unfixed composition.
Questions regarding historical renovations and the evolution of architecture and landscape
The renovation of Ravine House, the former home of Cornelia Hahn Oberlander and Peter Oberlander raises confounding questions about legacy, conservation, and continuity in the landscape. How should the land be stewarded over generations of human inhabitation? How can landscape design embrace the history of a site while making space for a new family?
The passage of time and material exchanges in the architecture and landscape echo the social conditions at Ravine House and its garden as it passes from one family to another. While a building might be thought to exist in an idealized state, its exposure to weather and time will eventually necessitate repair, reconstruction, and adaptation. Landscape is constantly in flux amidst cycles of growth and decay, erosion, and intervention. Plants vie for light, water, and nutrients, existing simultaneously in competition and collaboration. For some years one species or ecology might proliferate, only to recede as conditions change around them, exposing new niches for others to fill.
Our analyses of historical images show the origin of berms, planting of young trees, and the beginnings of the hemlock hedge – iconic elements of Cornelia’s garden. In comparison with more recent images, the photographs reveal the longevity and dynamism of landscape, as plants grow and transform spaces over time. Among those planted deliberately, some plants have remained for decades, while some have come and gone. Others have arrived unexpectedly and are warmly embraced, while some introductions have perhaps outstayed their welcome. The garden emerged out of a dialogue with its landscape architect, who endeavoured to “plant what you see”, a maxim that implored us to carefully observe the site.
Our imprints on the architecture and landscape
Our work on the Ravine House began with careful observation – watching the site shift through seasons and listening to its layered history. This process revealed how deeply the landscape has been shaped by its people, its ecology, and time itself. In this process, the pool terrace at the south end became our focus. Once part of an old-growth forest on Musqueam land, it was logged during colonization, regrew under University Endowment Lands management, and later became a family orchard, a children’s play space, and a meadow-ringed pool.
Unlike Cornelia Hahn Oberlander’s formal, modernist gardens, the pool terrace of her own home evolved organically through architecture and landscape. It carries imprints of family life, design experiments, and plants that arrived by chance. She used it as a stage for examining the habitat of interesting plants, to honour loved ones, and to express her identity. The result is layered, personal, and unfinished – making preservation a complex question.
Guided by Cornelia’s maxim to “plant what you see,” we approached the redesign with humility and intent. We chose vegetation that tells the story of the place: native species from nearby Pacific Spirit Park along with cultivated introductions made by Cornelia and her family over decades. For example, the meadow revealed a mix of species, including Crocosmia and Douglas aster. We incorporated both into the redesign – Crocosmia is native to South Africa, which is a gesture to the new family’s roots; and the aster is a resilient local native, and a link to the site’s ecology.
The result is not a fixed monument, but a living tribute of architecture and landscape design to a site that has always been in motion.