About: Mary Turner Shaw

Mary Turner Shaw (1906–1990) was born in Caulfield, Melbourne, Australia. She is one of the first women to be employed as an architect in the early 1930s in Australia and thus pioneered new pathways for female architects. Her career is widely known for her working qualities that made her oversee many projects across Australia. She also became a distinct figure as an architectural historian, when she started publishing books and written articles. Her skills were diverse as she worked as a fashion designer, interior designer, project manager, public works architect and pioneer architectural librarian. As historian Geoffrey Serle described her, she was "a born writer and research historian with imagination, the ability to tell a story and define and ask fundamental questions".