Professor, The Honourable Evan Walker AO, Minister for Planning and Environment from 1982-1986.

Professor the Honourable Evan Walker, AO, graduated Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Melbourne in 1959, and was to return to the Faculty as Dean from 1991 to 1994 and Professorial Fellow from 1991 to 2000.

Walker had taken his Diploma of Architecture at RMIT before completing the bachelor’s degree at Melbourne, graduating top student in his final year. He then won a Canadian Commonwealth Scholarship and undertook a Master of Architecture at Toronto University in 1960-2, graduating with first class honours.

He practised as an architect for eighteen years to 1979, founding a practice in Melbourne in 1963, in which he was joined by Daryl Jackson as partner the following year. He returned to Canada where he married Judith Outerbridge in 1965, and conducted a Canadian arm of the practice from Toronto between 1965 and 1969. The practice specialised in university work, with clients including Laurentian, Guelph, Toronto, Dalhousie, Calgary, Ottawa, New Brunswick and Montreal Universities in Canada, and Temple and Wayne State Universities in the United States.

In 1969 he returned to Melbourne, and during the 1970s the practice of Daryl Jackson Evan Walker Architects rose to considerable prominence, employing up to thirty architects in the Melbourne office, and becoming known for innovative school and university projects.

In 1979 Walker was elected to the Victorian Legislative Council for the Province of Melbourne, and for eight years in 1982-90 was a Minister in the Cain ALP Government and Leader of the Government in the Upper House. His portfolios included Planning and Environment; Agriculture and Rural Affairs; Aboriginal Affairs; Industry, Technology and Resources; Major Projects; The Arts; and Post-Secondary Education.

 As Minister for Planning he was instrumental in new planning controls in the Central
Business District, the control of building heights, protection of views of St Paul’s Cathedral, and the redevelopment of the south bank of the Yarra.

As an architect, as a politician, and as a policy maker, he has made an outstanding contribution to architecture, the environment, arts and educating in Australia. He was a member of the Prime Minister’s Urban Design Task Force from 1993 to 1995; inaugural Chairman of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute from 1993 to 1995; Chairman of the National Capital Authority (Tasmania) from 1997 and the Sullivan’s Cove Authority (Tasmania) in 2003-8.

In Victoria he was founding President of the Collins Street Defence Movement in 1976-9, a member of Council of RMIT from 1973 to 1983, and President in 1977-9; a member of the Committee for Melbourne in 1988-90; a board member of Council of the Victorian College of the Arts from 1992 and President from 1995 to 1999; Chairman of Ecumenical Housing for about twenty years from 1995; chair of the Victorian Community Council Against Violence in 1997; and a member of the Docklands Authority from 1998 to 2005.

Walker was awarded the Barrett Medal of the Town and Country Planning Association in 1986. In 1987 he was elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Australian Planning Institute, received the Total Community Development of the Urban Land Institute, and received the President’s Award of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (Victorian Chapter). In 1990 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Technology by the Victoria University of Technology. He received the Award of Merit of the Victorian Planning and Environmental Law Association in 1991. In 1996 he was appointed an Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AO).

Evan Walker returned to Melbourne University to become Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning in 1991. There he took a special interest in the Griffin Exchange Program, but his main achievement was to preside over the potentially difficult amalgamation of two departments into a one department faculty which he did with consummate tact and skill.

The Christopher Wren Society of Melbourne recently funded the establishment of the Evan Walker Studio in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning in recognition of his commitment to the interdisciplinary education of future professionals in the disciplines. 

(Source: http://www.unimelb.edu.au/unisec/calendar/honcausa/citation/walker.pdf)