Award-winning architect Ben Walker on what makes Canberra homes unique

Since its inception, Canberra has worn the label of Australia’s government town. But look beyond Parliament House, brutalist bureaucratic domains and master-planned boulevards, and another story has been unfolding. 

Across the capital, a growing number of contemporary homes are attracting national attention – not because they’re the loudest houses on the street, but because they’re intimately connected to the place in which they are built.

Architect Ben Walker has spent much of his career exploring what makes living in Canberra different. His homes don’t rely on grand gestures or eye-catching forms. Instead, they’re designed around the city’s own rhythms – its seasons, light and connection to nature.

“The city is maturing as it grows,” he says. “The transition from a country town to a major urban city is taking effect, and I think this is being reflected in the value that is now given to architects and architecture by the community.”

While many cities are defined by density, Walker says Canberra offers something increasingly rare: neighbourhoods woven through mature landscapes, with mountain ranges, parks and nature reserves often sitting just beyond the back fence.

“We are fortunate to be surrounded by pockets of mature landscape,” he says. “The opportunity to engage with these landscapes is an exciting proposition for an architect.”

That connection might mean elevating living spaces to capture sunsets across the Brindabella Ranges, positioning windows to frame established street trees, or using high-level glazing that allows home owners to watch the city’s oak and poplar canopies shift through the seasons. 

The capital’s climate plays an equally important role.

“The climate here is wonderful for about 70 per cent of the year,” Walker says. Spring, autumn and most of summer are light-filled and temperate, encouraging homes that blur the line between indoors and out and invite residents onto terraces, courtyards and gardens for much of the year.

That philosophy is evident in Walker’s recent works. Batten House, which received the Australian Institute of Architects (AIA) Malcolm Moir and Heather Sutherland Award – the ACT’s highest honour for a new house – is set in Curtin.

Its steel-framed structure of sliding batten screens, off-white brickwork wrapped around a central outdoor terrace, and recycled ironbark ceilings echo the mid-century houses the clients admired. 

It balances openness with privacy through carefully designed screening – a response, Walker says, to the risk of over-exposure that comes with opening a house to the landscape.

It’s a strategy, he notes, that hasn’t been as common in Canberra as it has in coastal or denser city settings, where public realms have grown busier over the past 20 years.

At the foot of the Mount Ainslie nature reserve, Walker’s Duffy Street project reinterprets the traditional Australian verandah in charcoal timber battens, wrapping an upper level of ply and recycled blackbutt that opens onto sweeping bush and mountain views.

It explores similar ideas of landscape integration in a different way, and won the AIA Robert Foster Prize for Light in Architecture.

Despite the awards, Walker remains a sole practitioner by choice, preferring to keep a spread of work – from modest renovations to larger houses and dual-occupancy developments – rather than scaling up to any one type of project.

For Walker, his design decisions aren’t about creating dramatic architecture for magazine covers. They’re about shaping the small moments that make a house enjoyable to live in for years to come.

Each project is planned to create regular “moments” throughout the day – glimpses into planted courtyards, changing light filtering through interiors, and proportioned spaces that feel generous regardless of size.

He also designs with the future firmly in mind. “Every project has a set of principles for ‘now’ and a set of principles for ‘then’,” Walker says.

The goal is to create homes that adapt alongside the families living in them – whether that’s children growing older, milestone celebrations filling the dining room, or quieter mornings years later spent with nothing more than a coffee overlooking the garden.

For visitors still convinced Canberra begins and ends with politics, Walker offers a different itinerary. Wander the heritage streets of Reid or the Corroboree Park precinct in Ainslie. Explore the interwar neighbourhoods of Forrest and Griffith, or the Tocumwal Housing precinct in O’Connor. Seek out modernist homes by Enrico Taglietti in Aranda or Hughes, or track down Robin Boyd’s houses in Red Hill.

As Canberra evolves, Walker believes residential architecture is evolving with it. Its most compelling buildings may, in the end, not be its public monuments, but the homes quietly redefining what it means to live there.