Dorian Wiszniewski
BArch , DipArch
Senior Lecturer in Architectural Design and Theory

Room: 3.01
Tel: 0131 650 2311
Email: dorian.wiszniewski@ed.ac.uk

Architecture: School of Arts, Culture and Environment (ACE)
The University of Edinburgh
20 Chambers Street
EH1 1JZ, Scotland

Profile

My work in practice from 1985 included internationally renowned projects with MacCormac Jamieson Prichard Architects (London); e.g. Fitzwilliam College Chapel, Cambridge (1988-93) and Cable and Wireless Teaching College, Coventry (1990-1993), and with Thomson Usher Wiszniewski (London), 3rd prize in the international competition The Richard Attenborough Centre for Disability and The Arts, Leicester (1993). Since 1996, as partner in Wiszniewski Thomson Architects (Edinburgh), built and project work has been published and exhibited nationally and internationally. The Company of Dancers (2001) won first prize in the USA Institute XVth International Competition for The Masques of the City, Brooklyn Heights River Promenade, New York.

Since joining University of Edinburgh in 1996, I have taught on every level of the professionally accredited programmes. Research interests, which directly correspond to taught courses, concern design practice as excited by the languages of theoretical critique.

Current Research: The Other / Borderlands in Budapest

The 'Other': Through the Sublime Gait of Norman's House steps into the semiotic flux of a perceived sublime dynamic in Norman's house (Norman Bates from Hitchcock's Psycho). The signs are anchored briefly in the themes of the Freudian Uncanny, the Jungian Archetypes of Memory and Lacanian Fragmentation, to describe 'other' but also accommodating aspects of Norman's landscape.

Borderlands in Budapest investigates and reacts to specific architectural conditions in Budapest. 'Borderlands' are seen less as the effect of undesirable tension between opposing forces and, once 'otherness' - political, cultural and historical hybridity - is seen as the paradigmatic place of departure (Homi Bhabha), more places of potentiality for concomitant architectural expression.

Publications: Competitions and Exhibitions

The Company of Dancers 1st prize. The USA Institute XVth International Competition for The Masques of the City, Brooklyn Heights River Promenade, New York, 2001 Exhibited House: House in the country, Lochwinnoch, Renfrewshire; house by the sea, Elie, Fife. Through the Mac Exhibition, Glasgow, 1997 With Thomson Usher Wiszniewski (London), 3rd prize in the international competition The Richard Attenborough Centre for Disability and The Arts, Leicester (1993).