Conversation with Cornelia Oberlander

This memory of Cornelia Oberlander was from my visit on March 26,  2011.  Cornelia passed away at 99 leaving a legacy of sustainable landscapes and youth mentorship.   

Susan Chung

 

Visited Cornelia Oberlander, the "Grande Dame" of Canadian landscape architecture. She'd been helping out at my school and wanted to catch up on a garden project. Cornelia has a reputation for being charming, gracious and immovably persistent. These traits are useful: she sometimes faced bureacratic hurdles as a pioneer of sustainable landscape architecture.  There is a bit of the rebel in Cornelia that helps her to connect with youth and we were very grateful to have her come and speak to youth at the Sustainable Design Ideas Fair.

Thinking about David Owen's Lecture,  I asked Cornelia about her thoughts on dense urban centres and biodiversity: "Is it possible to merge density with ecological design?"

PEP: Personal Experience and Perception

 I led a personal experience and perception exercise with teens to sense the ecosystem at a lower mainland wetland. What do you see, hear, taste, smell? This was a lead into exploring the ecosystem of a place

It is with deep sadness that we announce

 that Stanley King has passed away.

E. STANLEY KING 

Dip.Arch (Leics) UK, 1953, M.Arch (UBC) 1971, MAIBC (Retired), MRAIC 

Born- May 9, 1927 (Frome, Somerset, England) 

Deceased- December 3, 2020 (Vancouver, British Columbia) 

Stanley’ King is celebrated for his vibrancy, enthusiasm, generosity and  inspiration.
Stanley was a beloved husband, father, and grandfather...

Codesigning for Catching The Spirit

 We were at Picken House to codesign for the Catching the Spirit Society.  This Codesign was organized by Miku Yamada and our youth artist, Sean Chung drew for peers.  We all wore masks during this physically distant co-design. 

The City of Vancouver published their report of the Youth Co-Design For False Creek South!

Read all about it right here! Some excerpts below:

Jericho Lands Co-design

We are excited to be involved with facilitating for Jericho Lands, here's a video describing the project called" Inspire Jericho"
Inspire Jericho from Canada Lands on Vimeo.

Our City on the Wall activity was edited to respect that urbanization happened on the traditional unceded territory of our Coast Salish  First Nations People.

Clinton Park Co-Design for Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House

We held a youth co-design for Clinton Park.  People imagined their ideal neighbourhood park.  We are very grateful for Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House for inviting us to this intergenerational, diverse community! 

UNYA Co-Design

We were so privileged to be invited to facilitate the co-design workshop for the Urban Native Youth Association!  Here's a link to the drawings which are now design criteria for a new Urban Native Youth space:

A Summary of the UNYA Co-Design

Champlain Co-design

We assisted the Champlain community in a garden co-design to help them plan their community garden. 

APPLY TO BE AN ARTIST for the VSB SUSTAINABILITY CONFERENCE

Do you Doodle in Class? Care about Sustainability? The VSB Sustainability Conference wants you!

Do you doodle in class, during meetings? Can't stop drawing if you tried?  We have once again been requested to do youth artist training for youth to draw for other youth at the VSB Sustainability Conference! on Feb 19, 2018. We need to find at least 20 youth artists to draw for their peers.

The first of two co-design youth artist training sessions will take place on  

JAN 31

FEB 6

FEB 13

at Gladstone Secondary School in the staff room 4-6pm

4105 Gladstone Street

We will also warm up on the morning of the conference so you'll be ready to draw for the planning session!  APPLY TO BE AN ARTIST HERE.

What you will learn:

• Fast visual storytelling techniques that can be used for planning
• Sketching warm ups
• Fundamentals of co-design drawing
• How to draw fearlessly in front of peers

We will take you step by step to draw for the conference!
Ready, set, DRAW!

Ecole Pauline Johnson Co-design becomes a landscape!!

We are very grateful for Ecole Pauline Johnson for inviting us to attend their school garden opening.  We were involved with this project at the beginning to engage the students in co-design.  They learned about the ecological web of a west coast ecosystem and their relation to it and then they did co-design drawings which were given to the landscape architect.  The landscape architect created a plan with the student's design input and the new landscape was made collaboratively

Our lesson in Ecology to begin the design process

students learn they are part of an ecological web to begin the design process

the new garden

it is a working wetland

a place of art

we are here with Kyra, a key parent organizer

students wanted a willow tunnel