Saxil Tuxen

Saxil Tuxen (1885–1975) was an influential surveyor and town planner in Melbourne, Australia, during the interwar periods. Tuxen was born in Kew, Victoria, on 11 December 1885.

Tuxen worked for his Danish born father's surveying firm in Melbourne, during the first decade of the twentieth century. After the death of his father in 1913, Saxil took over the surveying practice. The firm had forty years experience in the sub division of suburban land throughout Melbourne. Tuxen drew on this experience and developed an awareness of the intrinsic relationship between surveying and town planning.

Tuxen "enjoyed success with conventional forms of design but he was also open to persuasion" and new ideas. His differing approaches to design and planning are evident in his 1914 "right-angled subdivision design in Bittern, Victoria". The Bittern design was based on a grid system plan. In contrast, his design for the ‘Hill Top’ development in Mont Albert, a suburb of Melbourne, incorporated "unusual size and shape, with an irregular streetscape". This example demonstrated Tuxen's movement away from the grid system, to the contemporary design approach of the early twentieth century. This new design embraced curved, radial and diagonal streets; the environment was celebrated through open spaces and parks, and civic buildings were placed in the centre of town.

Tuxen embraced Ebenezer Howard's idea of the garden city. He incorporated the environment into his design, rather than imposing the development on the topography of the site. The idea of the garden city and the utilisation of the natural environment are evident in Tuxen's 1923 design of the Ranelagh Estate, on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula. The estate had "distinctive long curved roads, recreation reserves, internal reserves, and spacious triangular traffic islands, which were designed to harmonise with the topography of the land". The idea of Howard's garden city was also evident in Saxil's 1925 design of Park Orchards, in Melbourne.

By the 1920s, Tuxen was as one of Australia's leading town planning experts. A plethora of planning knowledge and experience enabled Tuxen to become a founding member of the Victorian Town Planning Association.

Between 1923 and 1929, Tuxen worked for Melbourne's Metropolitan Town Planning Commission (MTPC) as a technical expert. His primary authorities were Melbourne's waterways, roadways and public transport. Tuxen's primary focus was to ensure that Melbourne's tram networks were preserved and maintained, at a time when other planning experts were calling for them to be removed and to promote development which incorporated Melbourne's waterways, notable, the Yarra River.

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