He was born Walter Bukbinder in Vienna, the son of a secular Jewish Czech chemical engineer.
[1][2] He studied architecture at Prague University, before escaping the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938 with his friend, the actor Herbert Lom, and travelling to Britain.
[3][4] In 1947 he joined London County Council as a planner, rising to a position in which, by 1958, he was in charge of planning the renewal and redevelopment of parts of the East End.
So we had to think ahead to what kind of changes there will be, particularly in industry and the increasing role of knowledge, computerisation and so on.
[1][3] National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C467/13) with Walter Bor in 1997 for its Architects Lives' collection held by the British Library.