Paul Walker is a professor of architecture in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne. A respected critic, Walker has contributed to Architecture New Zealand since its inception in 1986, and is a regular contributor to Architecture Australia. He has researched and written widely on architectural history and historiography in New Zealand, Australia and other post-colonial contexts. He is editor and lead author of John Andrews: Architect of Uncommon Sense (Harvard Design Press, 2023).
Paul Walker's Latest contributions
MPavilion 2023
Professor of architecture at the Melbourne School of Design, Paul Walker reviews MPavilion 10, designed by Japanese architect and 1995 Pritzker Prize laureate Tadao Ando, and executive architect Sean Godsell.
Warrnambool Library and Learning Centre by Kosloff Architecture
By knitting together a new three-storey building and a refurbished, heritage-listed hall in regional Victoria, Kosloff Architecture has designed a valuable asset for the community and the local TAFE.
MPavilion 2022 experiments with fabric-based architecture
The 2022 MPavilion, designed by Bangkok-based All Zone, has opened in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens.
Pond[er]: 2021 NGV Architecture Commission
In theory, the pink pond at the heart of this year’s NGV Architecture Commission seeks to evoke Australia’s inland salt lakes and to remind us of the precarious state of our water systems; in practice, it provides an alluring paddling pool for gallery visitors.
Vale John Andrews, 1933–2022
Paul Walker pays tribute to the extraordinary life and career of John Andrews, a late modernist architect whose work made an impact across three countries.
After The Australian Ugliness
This book which explores of Robin Boyd’s role as a cultural commentator is overdue. Paul Walker reviews and finds one of his questions remains unanswered.
A virtue of modesty: Lilydale High School, Zoology and Administration
In executing stage one of a masterplan for Lilydale High School, Harrison and White dignifies the suburban and the modest while also alluding to Melbourne’s broader architectural culture.
A good Melbourne citizen returns: The Capitol
After a major 1960s downscaling and a series of ad hoc renovations, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin’s Capitol Theatre has been re-engineered to beguile audiences for another hundred years.
Radical and poetic: Australian Islamic Centre of Newport
In the western suburbs of Melbourne, a landmark mosque designed by Glenn Murcutt and Elevli Plus assumes a contemporary architectural language that abstracts the conventional symbols of Islamic places of worship.
John Gollings: The history of the built world
Paul Walker visits a major retrospective exhibition of John Gollings’ work and finds the photographer “an explorer of the architectural image’s possibilities.”