Saxil Tuxen

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

Surveying and town planning career

Tuxen worked for his Danish-born father's surveying firm in Melbourne, during the first decade of the twentieth century. The firm had forty years experience in the sub division of suburban land throughout Melbourne. 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".

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. In 1925 Tuxen designed Park Orchards, in Melbourne. 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.

In 1925, during his association with the MTPC, Tuxen travelled to the US to gain further knowledge of contemporary technology and practice. He is often overshadowed by better known contemporaries like John Sulman and architect/planner Walter Burley Griffin. However, Tuxen is the "most successful [garden city planner], where success is defined in terms of projects actually reaching completion in a form close to the original design".

Ideas and influences Tuxen was exposed to a variety of surveying and town planning theory and design through his international travels. He "was in touch with international developments, and utilised them where appropriate in his work". Tuxen's interest in the civic improvement of society and his passion for "planning" as a profession resulted in the widespread advancement of town planning throughout Australia.

He has been described as a "socially conscious [and] politically active planner [who had] interests in the built environment and social policy".