‘100 Women Campaign’ Continues to Make Great Strides
As 2019 draws to a close, the 100 Women Campaign continues to grow at an impressive rate, with many admirers of Cornelia Hahn Oberlander registering their support for the new international landscape architecture prize with which she is synonymous.
Recently joining the landmark effort was Carol A. Whipple, RLA, FASLA, who enjoyed a 31-year career with the National Park Service and served as the project landscape architect for the White House under several Presidential administrations. An elite athlete who now competes in World Duathlon Championships as a member of Team USA, Whipple recalled how Oberlander was an early influence on her career—someone who was both “approachable” and “willing to share wisdom.”
Also joining the campaign is musician and translator Julie Donnell, the founder and former president of the Friends of the Parks of Allen County, Indiana. Donnell is not a landscape architect, but her work with the organization she founded, and her tenure as a board member of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, have increased her great appreciation and respect for “the profession that Cornelia Hahn Oberlander so magnificently practiced.”
Several leaders in private practice also joined the 100 Women Campaign. Signe Nielsen, FASLA, of Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects, P.C., has been a practicing landscape architect and urban designer in New York since 1978 and has earned more than 100 national and local design awards for public open-space projects. A graduate of Smith College, Nielsen was deeply inspired by Oberlander, a fellow Smith alumna whom she regards as a champion of “rewilding places, therapeutic spaces, and community engagement.”
Cynthia Smith, FASLA, a principal at the Boston-based Halvorson Design, has focused her career on creating spaces in the public realm, including urban and waterfront parks and plazas, streetscapes, and academic campus landscapes. She considers Oberlander to be someone who “helped to pave the way for generations of women landscape architects,” having first heard her speak about her collaboration with Arthur Erickson at Vancouver’s Robson Square in the early 1980s.
Ramsey Silberberg, the founder of Mantle Landscape Architecture, based in Berkeley, California, has also added her firm’s name to the roster of supporters. Having built a thriving practice driven by “client partnership, camaraderie, and a commitment to effect positive change through creative design,” Silberberg shared a particularly meaningful statement about Oberlander: “Cornelia showed us that the pages of history books, design monographs, and awards lists could also include women. Perhaps more importantly, she has modeled that women can pursue their work and succeed, bringing the dignity of their own voice to projects rather than trying to fit into a mold traditionally defined by male landscape architects.”
And finally, two principals of the Washington, D.C.-based OEHME, VAN SWEDEN | OvS were proud to be counted among the prize’s supporters. Lisa Delplace, FASLA, is the firm’s CEO, who has also been responsible for the planning, design, and execution of many of its award-wining commissions. And firm principal Sheila Brady, FASLA, is likewise a recognized leader and innovator in the field of sustainable design, having completed projects for a broad range of public, private, corporate, and residential clients. Together with their partner, Eric D. Groft, FASLA, Delplace and Brady see the contribution as a way “to encourage future visionaries and recognize Cornelia’s iconic role in the field, and her impact on diversity within the practice of landscape architecture.”
The 100 Women Campaign is just one of many ways to support the Oberlander Prize, which is the first and only international landscape architecture prize that includes a US$100,000 award, along with two years of public engagement activities. The prize will be awarded every other year, beginning in 2021.
