Rate My Professor Beth George

Dr Beth George is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture and Built Environment within the College of Engineering, Science and Environment at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy from RMIT University, a Bachelor of Architecture (Honours), and a Bachelor of Environmental Design from the University of Western Australia. As a registered architect, educator, and practitioner, her research specializes in urbanism, design, drawing, mapping, and speculation. Fields of research include sustainable architecture (25%), architectural design (50%), and architectural history, theory, and criticism (25%). George's investigations explore the transformation of spaces, architectural history, and methods to honour the built environment. Her PhD from RMIT focused on urban curation, employing cartography to read cities and generate distinctive, placeful architectural propositions. She examines mapping processes that enable architects to imagine new opportunities from cities' actualities and unique natures. Additional interests encompass collaborative drawing practices to foster attunement and shared creativity, the role of communication in architecture through spoken, written, and drawn forms, and community development via repurposing disused urban infrastructure into vibrant spaces, with attention to voided territories in Newcastle and resilience in post-industrial cities. Beth teaches and writes on urbanism, nurtures students' curiosity in architectural drawing across digital and manual media, and encourages fresh perspectives on urbanism.

George has been at the University of Newcastle since 2019, initially as Senior Lecturer, following appointments as Lecturer at the University of Western Australia (2013-2019) and Curtin University (2009-2012). In private practice, she operated a sole proprietorship reimagining and repurposing spaces, including a business matching empty urban spaces with tenants to activate declining areas. She received the Peter Overman Award for Residential Architecture – Houses (Alterations and Additions) at the 2020 WA Architecture Awards for 'Reed House', transforming a 1908 heritage house in Perth's Subiaco precinct into a modern family home while preserving its dignity through innovative materials and details. Awards also recognize her teaching and architecture practice, alongside award-winning research projects. Key publications include the book 'Procuring Innovative Architecture' (2010, with van Schaik L and London G); chapters 'A walk down four streets that don’t exist' (2016) and 'Western Australia: Curating the City' (2010); journal articles 'Unburdening expectation and operating *between*: architecture in support of palliative care' (Medical Humanities, 2022, with McLaughlan R), 'Christo's Corridor Store Front: Social Isolation and the Wildly Ordinary' (Informa, 2022), 'Prospects for a New New Brutalism' (Art + Australia, 2019), and 'Sympathetic World-making: Drawing-out Ecological-Empathy' (idea journal, 2020, with Ednie-Brown P et al.); conference papers 'Theoretical iterations of paraline projection from Ivan Leonidov, O. M. Ungers, and OMA' (SAHANZ 2020, with Farrah S) and 'Trajectories of Axonometry through Distances and Disciplines' (SAHANZ 2019, with Farrah S); and creative works such as 'Reed House' (2020), 'COVID Retrospect: a reconsidered residential habitat' (2022), 'Commonplace' (2020, with Chapman M), and 'Surrogate Drawing' (2019, with Chapman M et al.). Through book chapters, journal articles, conference papers, competitions, exhibitions, and curation, George contributes significantly to architectural discourse on urban futures, empathetic design, and historical speculation.