Dr Beau Beza

Beau recently co-edited, contributed to four chapters and in 2016 (through Routledge) had published Sustainability Citizenship in Cities: Theory and Practice. A book seeking to explain how sustainability citizenship can manifest in urban built environments as both responsibilities and rights. In 2014 he co-edited and contributed three chapters to The Public City. A book providing a blueprint for the improvement of civic and institutional purpose in the creation of the public city. He is part of a $1.4 million research project funded through the Australian Centre for International Agriculture Research. A project investigating knowledge transfer in the conflict area of Mindanao, Philippines.

He has years of professional and academic experience working on a variety of projects in Australia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, The United States, Norway, Mexico, Colombia, Nepal and Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. In consultancy he uses an asset-based and co-production model to realise places in urban and rural settings. His research revolves around developing an understanding in how people derive meaning from the natural and built environment and in academics he has established partnerships with universities in Mexico City, Mexico and Bogotá, Colombia. His latest international collaboration, in Colombia, resulted in the paper Informal Settlements and Placemaking: The Case of Caracoli barrio in Bogotá which argued that through inventiveness and the richness of community members’ lives in informal settlements their experiences can offer a different path to understanding the concept of placemaking in the developed world. An earlier collaboration, in Mexico City, resulted in the production of a paper presented at the 6th International Urban Design Conference. This urban redevelopment collaboration was used as bases for a joint study tour where students from Universidad La Salle travelled to Australia to partner with local students. They investigated urban redevelopment in Melbourne, in partnership with the City of Melbourne. All participants flew to Mexico City to conduct a similar exercise in the City’s historic centre, partnering with the Federal District of Mexico City and TEAM730 design to develop a vision for an ancient street used by the Aztecs and now part of a 100ha master planning project, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8inJADSJ-w.

Much of Beau’s perception and development planning work is based in (rural) urbanising communities and Global Cities. For example, in Nepal, he has worked with the Junbesi community, since 2003, to realise 15 different infrastructure projects and many of his students have used his model of community engagement to realise three of their own projects. Two groups of his students have been awarded grants to fund the construction of their respective projects. The international organisation, World Expeditions, have also used his model of infrastructure development to construct three waste infrastructure projects for monasteries in Nepal.

An achievements of Beau’s is that in 1999 he helped found Architects Without Frontiers (http://www.architectswithoutfrontiers.com.au/), a not-for-profit design organisation focused on “long-term community development projects, integrating design and appropriate technology into sustainable development practice through partnership with communities, other non-profits, clients and organisations and on community assistance and environmental projects”.