Margaret Feilman
Margaret Feilman was an Australian architect, landscape designer, and town planner who became Perth's first female town planner. A founding member of the Western Australian Town Planning Institute, she reshaped how the public and profession thought about urban design, most notably through her design and implementation of the Kwinana new town.
Early Life and Training
Margaret Anne Feilman was born in 1921 in Western Australia, at a time when few women pursued careers in architecture or engineering-related fields. She trained as an architect, an unusual path for a woman of her generation, and developed a strong interest in the built environment beyond individual buildings, extending into landscape design and the broader organization of towns and cities. Her early professional development coincided with a period of significant national reconstruction following the Second World War, giving her practical, large-scale experience early in her career. This grounding in both architecture and landscape design would later prove essential to her pioneering work in town planning, a discipline still in its infancy in Australia during the mid-twentieth century. Feilman's willingness to work across traditional professional boundaries, combining design sensibility with planning strategy, set her apart from many of her contemporaries and prepared her for the leadership roles she would soon assume in shaping Western Australia's urban landscape.
Career and Major Achievements
In the 1940s, Feilman worked for the Commonwealth Government on the reconstruction of Darwin and New Guinea after the devastation of the Second World War, gaining early experience in large-scale planning under difficult conditions. In 1950, she became a founding member of the Western Australian Town Planning Institute, helping to establish town planning as a recognized profession in the state. She went on to become Perth's first female town planner, breaking new ground in a male-dominated field. Feilman was deeply committed to public education, engaging in extensive public speaking to raise awareness of the importance of thoughtful urban planning for community wellbeing. Her most celebrated achievement was the design and implementation of the Kwinana new town, an industrial satellite city south of Perth, where she applied integrated principles of architecture, landscape design, and planning to create a functional, livable community from the ground up.
Did You Know?
Margaret Feilman helped rebuild Darwin and New Guinea for the Commonwealth Government in the 1940s before going on to become Perth's first female town planner and design the entire new town of Kwinana.
Legacy and Impact
Margaret Feilman's career left a lasting imprint on Western Australian town planning, both through her tangible projects like Kwinana and through her advocacy for professional standards and public understanding of planning. As a founding figure of the Western Australian Town Planning Institute, she helped build the institutional framework that would guide the profession for decades. Her role as Perth's first female town planner made her a trailblazer for women entering architecture and planning fields in Australia, opening doors that had previously been closed. Feilman died in 2013, leaving behind a legacy defined by her insistence that planning should serve ordinary people's daily lives, not merely technical or bureaucratic goals. Her integrated approach—melding architecture, landscape design, and planning—anticipated later movements toward holistic urban design. She is remembered as a pioneering figure whose work helped shape modern Western Australia and whose advocacy elevated the public's understanding of why good planning matters.