Robson Square

When Cornelia Hahn Oberlander joined the Robson Square design team as its chief landscape architect, she immediately recognized that Arthur Erickson’s conceptual design was built upon complex  relationships between interior building elevations and exterior landscape levels.  

To understand the vertical changes within the three-block site, Oberlander  developed a matrix for all outdoor spaces. How might landscape design features at each level be  modified to evoke new sensations, stimulate new activities? 

For recurring landscape features like water basins, for example, a change of elevation triggers a  change in size. As water moves down across the south and centre blocks of Robson Square to approach  street level, the basins become successively smaller. The sound of falling water increases, helping mute  traffic noise at the street. 

The inventive variety of Oberlander’s multi-level landscapes also unified the diverse architecture, which  ranged from a 1911 neoclassical Provincial Courthouse (now the Vancouver Art Gallery) to the north,  and a new Law Courts to the south. 

Exterior and interior spaces were inventively combined on the Law Courts block and centre block, with roofs supporting extensive planting areas; an interior glass ceiling providing a water basin on the plaza level; and structural walls serving as exterior waterfalls. At the central block, a low-profile structure was largely camouflaged by the water and vegetation that Oberlander conceived in three typologies: walkway plantings, box planters, and “flying planters” cantilevered from the building facades.

It was the 50,000 shrubs and trees, primarily on structures, that commanded the greatest attention. Oberlander was the Canadian pioneer of emerging green roof technologies, including computerized  irrigation and fertilization techniques, new waterproofing membranes, and light-weight growing mediums. In 2009, when the original waterproofing systems needed an overhaul, many of her original  plantings were saved and maintained.  

The spot which most poignantly embraces the project’s goals to reclaim the city for the people was Oberlander’s mound at the corner of Robson and Hornby streets. Perched almost eight metres above the plaza level and crowned with extensive planting, this spot was a place where people, according to Oberlander, “feel like they are not in the midst of a city.”

A half century after its inception, Robson Square’s cherished “living room” remains a central gathering  space, a green respite in what is now a very different urban core. The project has been a catalyst for development, attracting the dense urban housing that now characterizes downtown Vancouver.

Like Vancouverites, international crowds are drawn to Robson Square for its central city location and its  programs. When Vancouver hosted the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, over 1.5 million  people came for the free ice-skating in the sunken plaza, the performances, and the zip-line.

It is also a place for activism. The stairs of the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG), in particular, serve as a podium  for political demonstrations, HIV and AIDS activism, rallies against war and economic oppression, and  calls for climate change action. In 2019, Greta Thurnberg spoke here during the Climate Strike March. In  2021, Haida artist Tamara Bell placed 215 pairs of children’s shoes on the steps, creating an impromptu  memorial and collective place for Indigenous healing.

Robson Square continues to build on its strengths. Most recently, lead landscape architect Joseph Fry  (Hapa founder) led the transformation of the North Plaza of VAG, and then turned the 800 block of  Robson Street into a pedestrian plaza. Both sites reinstate pink and grey pavers reminiscent of Robson  Square’s original design.

The architectural historian, Kenneth Frampton, equates Robson Square at its inception with Rockefeller Center in the 1930s, which spurred the growth of Manhattan. Today, Robson Square  continues to provoke change within the city and beyond. It defined an emerging area of expertise in  green roof design, spurring on an entire industry – a giant step forward toward more ecological, more human, places.

Robson Square’s elegant and often replicated “stramps” quickly became iconic.

The hybrid stair/ramps, which first offered places to sit and reflect, have been adopted  in many other urban landscapes. One of the most prominent stramps was created in 2012 at Clock  Tower Beach along the Quai de l'Horloge in Old Montréal. Claude Cormier et Associés (now CCxA)  designed these stramps as an homage to Cornelia Hahn Oberlander from Claude Cormier.