School of Architecture
and Planning

Massachusetts Institute
of Technology
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02139

Current

• Creative Director, ArchNet;
• Lecturer, Department of Urban Studies and Planning; and
• Executive Associate Director, Design Laboratory

Research Interests

• Online communities (social and spatial aspects of information technology);
• Design of online environments for collaboration, learning, and communication;
• Design of public space and urban landscapes; and
• Public art and public places.

Bio

Anne Beamish is the Creative Director of ArchNet, a large-scale, online archive and international professional community of over 70,000 architects, planners, landscape architects, conservationists, and scholars with a special focus on the built environment in the Muslim world.

She is also Executive Associate Director of the Design Laboratory at MIT and teaches classes in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the Media Lab within the School of Architecture and Planning. From 2002-2007, she was Assistant Professor in the Community and Regional Planning graduate program in the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin.

An architect and urban planner by training, her research and teaching interests include the social and spatial aspects of information and communication technologies; the design of online environments to support physical and virtual communities; the design of public space and urban landscapes; and public art.

She received a B.Arch. degree from Carleton University in Ottawa Canada, as well as an M.S. in Architecture Studies, Master in City Planning, and Ph.D. in Urban Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Publications

2009. Technological Imagination and the Historic City: Florence. Naples, Italy: Liguori Editore. (with Dennis Frenchman, Giandomenico Amendola and William J. Mitchell).

2008.  Learning from Work: Designing Organizations for Learning and Communication. Stanford University Press.

2007. “Preserving Architectural Heritage in the Digital Era: ArchNet’s Lessons and Future Directions,” in Lung-Hung Chang, Yu-Tung Liu, and June-Hao Hou, The Proceedings of DACH 2007: The 2007 International Conference on Digital Applications in Cultural Heritage, Tainan, Taiwan, National Center for Research and Preservation of Cultural Properties, 2007: 3-28. (with William J. Mitchell and Shiraz Allibhai).

2006. “Service-Learning in Texas Colónias”   In From the Studio to the Streets: Service-Learning in Architecture and Planning Education. Washington DC: The American Association for Higher Education.

2004. “The City in Cyberspace” In The Cybercities Reader.  Edited by Stephen Graham.  Routledge.

2002. “Strategies for International Design Studios: Using Information Technologies for Collaborative Learning and Design.” In Architectural Education Today: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Eds Ashraf Salama, William O’Reilly, Kaj Noschis. Lausanne: Comportements.

2001. “The City in Cyberspace.”  In Imaging the City: Continuing Struggles and New Directions. Eds. Lawrence J. Vale and Sam Bass Warner. Newark NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research (CUPR) Press at Rutgers.

1999. “Approaches to Community Computing: Bringing Technology to Low-Income Groups.” In High-Tech and Low-Income Communities: Prospects for the Positive Use of Advanced Information Technology Eds. Donald A. Schön, Bish Sanyal, William J. Mitchell.  Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Courses

@MIT
MAS.961 The World of Night Fall 2009
11.123 Big Plans Spring 2008
11.941 Digital City Design Workshop: Technology and the Livability of Historic Cities — Florence, Italy Fall 2007

@The University of Texas at Austin
CRP 980z Physical Planning Workshop Fall 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006
CRP 386 Visual and Planning Communication Spring 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
CRP 386 Urban Public Places Fall 2003, Spring 2005, 2007
CRP 390 Designing Digital Communities Fall 2002, Spring 2004, Fall 2005
CRP 386 Design for Planners Spring 2002, 2003