Dr. Dorian Wiszniewski is a senior lecturer in ESALA and partner in Wiszniewski Thomson Architects.   Built and project work have been published and exhibited nationally and internationally. Amongst many awards, Wiszniewski Thomson Architects won the Royal Scottish Academy Medal for Architecture in 2006 for the ‘Water House', Crieff.   He has been an invited artist included in the annual RSA show on two other separate occasions (2012 and 2016).

Dorian was Visiting Professor for Architecture and Urban Planning at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Sassari, Sardinia, 2011-12. He was also Visiting Professor in Architecture and Urban Design for Hebei University of Technology, Tainjin, China, appointed in 2016.  Dorian was a Director of the Asia Scotland Trust between 2014-2021 and a Board Member for Architecture and Design Scotland between 2006-2009. 

Dorian has led various PG programmes in ESALA: Master of Architecture, M Sc Architectural and Urban Design, M Sc Reflective Design Practices and PhD Architecture By Design. 

In 2014, Wiszniewski, along with the PhD Architecture By Design community in ESALA, founded and act as editors for Drawing On, a peer reviewed international e-journal that acts as a platform for developing topics associated with or addressed through design-led research into architecture.  It is currently on edition 5.

Academic papers have been published in China, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Israel, Italy, Spain, Turkey, UK, and USA.

Recent academic output primarily focuses on research-led design and design-led research with core interests on processes of urbanization, particularly through the paired architectural and philosophical questions of socio-economic representation and production. 

Research draws on political and philosophical discourse (particularly Phenomenology and Crititcal Theory) with implications for architectural and urban design practice. Current research concerns Ecosophy, in particular how this impacts theories and practice of ‘Community,’ both human and non-human  Ecosophic Urbanism is the phrase he uses to hold a range of concepts of community together: Borderland Community (Habermas); Extraterritorial Community (Levinas); Unavowable Community (Blanchot); Narratological Community (Ricoeur); Open Community (Agamben); Curating [Heterological] Community (Ranciere); Parasitic Community (Serres) and Ecosophic Community (Bateson, Simondon and Guattari).  He places less attention on the appropriateness of forms for community and more on developing processes for “becoming community.” The impetus of “becoming community” steers his approach to design-led research. 

Example list of publications:

1.  Wiszniewski, D., Hilley, M., Bin, Bing, Binge – A Wild Transdisciplinary Planetary House-Garden Party in the Bingscape of West Lothian, in Wild Scotland, eds. Stratigos, M, and Wartmann, F. (Aberdeen: University of Aberdeen Press, expected publication date 2026)
2. Wiszniewski, D., The University of Derry: The Charting of Life, in Belfast, Post-Conflict City, eds. Martinez, A., and Mackel, C (Barcelona/Madrid: Actar, expected publication date 2027)
3.  Wiszniewski, D., et al, Parasituation Edinburgh – Waverley Gardens, in Conceiving the Plan, Nuance and Intimacy in the Construction of Civic Space (Milan: Skira, 2022) pp.121-134 
4. Wiszniewski, D., Ahmedabad Pols and the Transindividual, in Housing and the City, eds. Katharina Borsi, Didem Ekici, Jonathan Hale and Nick Haynes (London: Routledge, 2022) pp. 187-198.
5. Wiszniewski, D., Calcutta, India: Dover Lane – a cosmo-ecological collective life of Indian modernity, in Architecture and Collective Life, eds. Penny Lewis, Lorens Holm and Sandra Costa Santos (London: Routledge, 2021) pp.218-227.
6. Wiszniewski, D., Reima Pietilä and Gesture in Research-By-Design, The Finnish Embassy in New Delhi 1962-1982, in the Nordic Journal of Architectural Research, Issue 3/2018, (Oslo: Norway, SINTEF Academic Press, 2018) ISSN: 1893-5281. pp. 29-56.
7.  Wiszniewski D., Argufying Calcutta, Para-Situation [Kolkata] (Edinburgh: Wedge Publications, 2019) ISBN 978-1-9993772-1-2 
8. Wiszniewski D., Water, Architecture, Art and Co-creativity, in Reflections: glass: water: art: science. (Edinburgh: Ampersand, 2016) ISBN 978­0­D­9573892­6­7, pp. 30-43.
9. Wiszniewski, D., Bombay City Wise, Parasituation Mumbai, (Ampersand, Architecture, University of Edinburgh: Edinburgh, 2016) ISBN 978-0-9573892-5-0
10. Wiszniewski, D. (2014), Perspectival Shining, in Gasperini, M and Melis, A., Shining Dark Territories (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2014) pp.25-39 (in English and Italian).
11. Wiszniewski, D., (2012), ‘City as Museum: Museum as City, Mediating The Everyday and Special Narratives of Life’, in Narrative Space/Museum Making, eds. Jonathan Hale, Laura Hanks and Suzanne McLeod (London: Routledge, 2012) pp. 119-132, ISBN 978-0-415-67603-8.
12.  Wiszniewski, D., (2010), “Seriality And The Radically Passive Encounter With Buildings: The Everyday Process Of Reading Architecture - The Geometry And Gesturality Of Lamb’s House, Leith, Scotland,” in The Nexus Network Journal, Geometry and Rhetoric, Volume 12, Issue 3 (2010), (Basel: Birkhauser Verlag and Springer, 2010), pp. 421-443.  DOI: 10.1007/s00004-010-0048-y
13. Wiszniewski, D., (2008), “Beyond Architecture: Architecture and Immateriality,” in Athens by Sound, Greek pavilion exhibition book - 11th Architecture Biennale of Venice, Editors: A. Karandinou, C. Achtypi, S. Giamarelos. (Athens: Futura Publications, 2008). Pp. 48-52, ISBN 9789606654801
14. Wiszniewski, D., (2008), The Space of Communicativity; Levinas And Architecture, in A Century With Levinas or Destiny of the Other, ed. Nicholas Bunnin and Simon Critchley (Renmin University Press, China, 2008), pp.457-468. ISBN 978-7-300-09536-3/B.575 [In Chinese Language].
15. Wiszniewski, D., (2004), Tectonics and the Space of Communicativity, in Contribution and Confusion: Architecture and the Influence of Other Fields of Enquiry, ACSA Press, New York, 2004, pp. 423-431, ISBN 0-935502-55-6.
16.  Wiszniewski, D., and Coyne, R.D., [50/50] (2002), Mask and Identity: The Hermeneutics of Self Construction in the Information Age. Building Virtual Communities, (ed.) Ann Renninger and Wesley Shumar (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002), ISBN 0 521 78075 6 (hb), 0 521 78558 8 (pb), pp.191-214.