Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: The Latest Architecture and News

The biennial Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize was established to increase the visibility, understanding, appreciation, and dialogue around landscape architecture. The creation of the Oberlander Prize began in 2014, and the most recent laureate was landscape architect Kongjian Yu, the pioneer of the "Sponge City" concept. This year, The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) announced that Mexico City-based landscape architect Mario Schjetnan and his firm Grupo de Diseño Urbano (GDU) are the recipients of the 2025 Oberlander Prize. According to TCLF, Schjetnan belongs to a generation of landscape architects, architects, and urbanists who became aware of the environmental impacts of urban development and their consequences for life, the planet, and its inhabitants. He and the GDU team are the first Latin Americans to be awarded the Oberlander Prize laureate.

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Women have played a pivotal role in the evolution of landscape architecture, overcoming the constraints of a male-dominated profession to introduce groundbreaking ideas and fresh perspectives. From early pioneers to contemporary leaders, their work has reshaped how we interact with public and private spaces, intertwining aesthetics, functionality, and sustainability in innovative ways.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, female landscape architects carved out their place in the profession, emphasizing harmony between built structures and natural landscapes. Their projects showcased a deep commitment to community and ecological balance, setting the stage for an inclusive and thoughtful approach to design that continues to inspire the field today.

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Beijing-based landscape architect Kongjian Yu has been announced by the Cultural Landscape Foundation as the recipient of the 2023 Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize (“Oberlander Prize”). Kongjian Yu has gained international recognition for his concept of “sponge cities,” a measure to address and prevent urban flooding in the context of accelerated climate change. The concept was adopted as a national policy in China in 2013, prioritizing large-scale nature-based infrastructures such as wetlands, greenways, parks, canopy tree and woodland protection, rain gardens, green roofs, permeable pavements, and bioswales. Yu has been selected by the international jury of the Oberlander Prize, recognizing him as “a force for progressive change in landscape architecture around the world.” Organized biannually, the prize aims to recognize and give visibility to landscape architecture and the ways in which it can address issues of climate change and sustainability.

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The Cultural Landscape Foundation - TCLF has awarded Julie Bargmann, founder of landscape architecture firm D.I.R.T. Studio, with the first ever Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, a distinguished award bestowed on designers who are “exceptionally talented, creative, courageous, and visionary, with a significant body of built work that exemplifies the art of landscape architecture.”

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Landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander has won the 2015 Margolese National Design for Living Prize for her impact on Canadian cities. The School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia, who awards the annual $50,000 prize, chose Oberlander for her "breathtaking, poetic, unforgettable, charged with meaning, and above all, Modernist" designs that have made "outstanding contributions to the development or improvement of living environments for Canadians of all economic classes."