Spaces around us

Landscape architecture

Surroundings shape our mood, our esthetics and feeling of well-being. Sometimes we find beauty and inspiration in an unruly natural garden, other times in designed harmony of minimalist architecture. Spaces that we encounter in our daily lives can be unremarkable or disturbing, a canvas of a social bunt – or tranquil and meditative oases of repose.

Our urban world offers spaces that fluidly fuse architecture, landscape, garden, art, vistas and horizons… I could spend vacations strolling through Getty museum grounds in a blissful reverie, immersed in a harmony of space, architecture and art; or Park Guell, a quintessential Gaudi’s organic architecture. Yet, I am also taken in by the exposed industrialism of Centre Pompidou, hosting an iconic modern art of the early 20th century, grounds swarmed with immigrants and performers.

The spaces around us are meaningful because of their beauty or despite their ugliness, or should we call it dis-esthetics. These spaces enrich us while we pass, contemplate, take a photo or live imbedded into their unforeseen influences.

Here, and in the book below, we celebrate an intricate art of landscape design and its power to unify nature with art and architecture. This story is about a Canadian artist – Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, and her legacy of visionary landscape designs that connects communities, nature and art with an acute sense of our northern identity.

Cornelia Hanh Oberlander

The theme of ‘Spaces around us’ is complemented by Hung’s stunning photography account of one of the most beautiful and livable cities in Canada, Vancouver, at the birth of spring, where Cornelia left her recognizable mark.