Robson Square was revitalized for the 2010 Olympics and now its rooftop gardens are being redesigned by award-winning landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander. The original gardens (completed in 1983) were designed by her in unison with the master architect of the Robson Square Complex, Arthur Erickson. Oberlander is a legend in the green-roofing industry and has also designed the roof gardens of Vancouver’s Public Library on Georgia St.
Robson Square and its gardens face the Vancouver Art Gallery and together form a vital centre of activity in the heart of the city. Oberlander, as she has in the past, will enhance this centre by bringing nature’s beauty into an urban environment.

Denis Bouvier’s photo also highlights the banner for the VAG’s current exhibit by photographer Robert Adams: “The Place We live, a Retropective Selection of Photographs,” Sept. 25, 2010 – Jan. 16, 2011. Adams has chronicled the western American landscape for the past four decades. In this exhibit, his photographs starkly present the degradation of the environment amid the continual march of suburban development. His pictures have been described as spare and dispassionate yet speak volumes in regards to man’s impact on the natural world.

In contrast, Oberlander’s landscaping and greening of our urban centres represents our yearning to recapture nature’s beauty which, as Adams demonstrates, we have relentlessly altered.