Professor Dimity Reed AM

As Commissioner of Housing in the late 1970s and early 80s, Dimity offered new views and approaches to old problems in public housing. She also has a long-standing commitment to women's issues and was a founding member of the Family Planning Association and the Childbirth Education Association.

Born in the New South Wales country town of Parkes in 1942, Dimity grew up in Melbourne. After her marriage ended she returned to study architecture as a mature-age student, juggling the demands of study and raising her three young children. She completed her Bachelor's degree at the University of Melbourne in 1976 and in 1999 gained a Masters in Architecture from RMIT.

From 1978-82, she was a Commissioner of Housing in Victoria and later became the Chief Executive Officer of the White Paper Secretariat on Public Housing in Victoria. Dimity coordinated the Victorian pilot program and then the national Architecture in Schools program, which aimed to establish an understanding of our built world as part of the primary school curriculum.

For four years she was Chairman of Directors of Archicentre, the home advisory division of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA), which provides advice to homebuyers and renovators. In 1984, Dimity became the first woman President of a State Chapter of the RAIA. She has received numerous awards from the RAIA. Throughout her career, Dimity has run her own architectural and urban design and planning practice. In 1994, she was appointed Professor in Urban Design at RMIT University and since 2001 has been Adjunct Professor.

For five years she was a part-time Member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal's Planning Division and for nearly 20 years she has been the Chair or Member of panels hearing proposed amendments to local government planning schemes. Dimity has also been active in local government as an elected Councillor with the City of St Kilda (1992-94) and as a Commissioner with the City of Moreland (1994-96) with particular interest in planning and development issues.

For many years, Dimity has worked towards improving the educational employment opportunities for young Victorian women. For 22 years she was a Board Member of the YWCA and she is a Patron of the Queen Victoria Women's Centre. She was a co-founder of the Association of Women in Architecture that for some years provided support and encouragement to women working in architecture.

Dimity is the City of Melbourne's Ambassador for Architecture, a Trustee for the Shrine of Remembrance and a board member of the Urban & Regional Land Corporation and Zoos Victoria. Dimity Reed has had a long-standing commitment to the roles that architecture, urban design and public housing serve in our society.
"How and what we build and how we share our resources around reveal our values as a society and the ideas that we engage with. They are the biography of our time that we give to our children, so they must be good," she says.