E-mail A Friend Tell a friend about the information found on this page by sending them an e-mail.   Your Name: Your E-mail:   Type an e-mail address, then click add: Add a Personal Message: (Optional)

September/October 2007 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: Mackenzie Delta Feature: Porbeagle shark Feature: Leamington tomatoes Feature: Landscape architect The Inside Story Editor's Notebook Reverberations Explorer À la carte Mosaic

You can hear the steady drumbeat of a cold rain on the slender glass house near the University of British Columbia (UBC) where landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander lives. "There's the sound here of nature. I love it," says Oberlander, her voice still tinged with the accent of her native Germany. In her early 80s, she pauses for a moment in the soft light filtering through the Douglas firs that tower above the minimalist home she shares with her husband of 54 years, architect and urban planner H. Peter Oberlander. But the repose doesn't last long. As Canada's reigning queen of green landscapes, both on the ground and in the air, Oberlander has a list of things to do. She jumps up, grabs a red umbrella, pulls on a long, black down coat over her tiny figure and heads off to check up on her most famous landscape, a roof garden in downtown Vancouver.

The three-block-long park is planted on top of an office building that stretches between Robson Street and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Designed to look like a concrete skyscraper lying on its side, the building houses the Provincial Law Courts, a UBC satellite campus and government offices. The roof has hanging gardens, pine trees and rhododendrons, three waterfalls to block out the sounds of the city, plus a rink that was once iced over for skaters but is now used by skateboarders and salsa dancers. Robson Square, as it is known, has been celebrated for the interplay between the soft contours of Oberlander's roof garden and the sharp geometric lines of architect Arthur Erickson's construction. It is a place where lawyers and provincial bureaucrats do their daily business, but it has also become an oasis for anyone seeking an escape from the city's concrete core.

For the rest of this story, visit your local newsstand or go to our store to buy this issue.

top