Urs Bette is an Associate Professor at Curtin University, Perth. Trained as an architect at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and holding a PhD from RMIT University, Melbourne, his work bridges built and speculative projects to advance practice-led knowledge and research. He established a Design Research PhD stream at the University of Adelaide and now serves as Co-Director of Creative Practice Research at Curtin University’s School of Design and Built Environment.

Urs’ creative practice explores the potential of the unreasonable in design, examining how an artistic context of discovery can be productively linked with a consensus-based context of justification to address relevant issues in new and original ways. This includes strategies for urban densification that draw on local histories and voices - including those of the seemingly inanimate, such as the existing built fabric and the ground itself - to inform the site-related production of architectural character and space.

His design expertise has been recognised through exhibitions and publications including the Venice Architecture Biennale, Aedes Architecture Forum in Berlin, FRAC Centre Val de Loire in Orléans, and ARCH+ magazine. He currently co-leads practice-based research partnerships at Curtin University, focusing on design as a mode of inquiry and impact. His book, Architecture in Dialogue with an Activated Ground: Unreasonable Creatures, published by UCL Press in London, articulates the methods and core values of his creative practice.