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Biography
After his studies in architecture at TU Dresden, Dr Wiedmann completed his master's and a German Doctor of Engineering (PhD) at the Institute of Urban Planning and Design and its centre for International Urbanism at the University of Stuttgart, Germany.
In the following years, he was engaged at Albert Speer + Partner (AS+P) in Frankfurt am Main, where he worked on projects in Munich, such as the urban design and planning parameters for a high-density affordable housing project (1,000 units) to promote integrated development and the new Siemens Headquarters in the historic centre.
In 2011, he joined an international research collaboration between the Technical University of Munich and Qatar University as a post-doc and project director. Over three years, during which he lived in Doha, Qatar, he coordinated an interdisciplinary and international team and explored new approaches to identify the various interdependencies between emerging knowledge economies and new forms of urbanism in the Global South.
After successfully acquiring a new research project from the Qatar National Research Fund in 2015, he joined the University of Strathclyde (Department of Architecture) in Glasgow, where he studied the effects of rapid migration on housing and mobility concerns in emerging cities. This research effort resulted in his book publication: 'Building Migrant Cities in the Gulf - Urban Transformation in the Middle East'.
In parallel to his research projects, he has been engaged as external lecturer and examiner of undergraduate and postgraduate courses at Frankfurt University of Applied, Münster University of Applied Sciences, German University of Cairo, and HFT Stuttgart between 2014 and 2019.
In March 2019 he joined the University of Nottingham and its Department of Architecture and Built Environment as Assistant Professor in Urban Design and Architecture. Dr Wiedmann is apart of the Architecture, Tectonics and Culture Research Group where he is the lead for research on urbanism and the university-wide Energy Institute, where he is apart of the challenge leads in Communities and the Buil Environment.
Dr Wiedman is co-course director of the MArch in Sustainable Urban Design and module convenor of ABEE3035 Sustainable Urbanism and ABEE4019 Urban Design Management, which are essential components of this one-year postgraduate course with an average annual student cohort of 18 students from various disciplines and international backgrounds. He recently published a co-authored textbook, which is the main introduction to this course setting up its key foundations: Urban Design: The Basics (2025, by Routledge).
In addition, he is teaching urban design and housing related studios in both the MArch and BArch (Part 1) courses. He is head of the vertical design unit 1C: co-urban focusing on architecture + urban renewal in international contexts and via innovative urban acupuncture to connect places, reuse and local building materials to achieve a high level of social, economic, and environmental responsiveness in architectural design.
Expertise Summary
Dr Wiedmann is specialised in investigating urbanism and housing dynamics from an international and interdisciplinary perspective who has been working in research, consulting, and teaching since 2006. His research frameworks and methodologies follow an integrated approach and are rooted in space production theories set in juxtaposition to a contemporary understanding of sustainable urbanism rooted in neighbourhood formation.
His involvement in interdisciplinary research projects and courses at eight universities in Germany, the UK, and the Middle East made it possible for him to gain in-depth experience in investigating the complex relationship between people and places on an international scale.
The main focus of his research can be found in exploring integrated ways to investigate current urban morphologies (e. g. housing typologies) and their transformations as the result of newly emerging spatial practices, via digital modeling methods such as Space Syntax, mapping surveys, and strategic observations or interviews (e. g. focus groups).
His current focus is centred on new integrated models of data sets enabling better digital twins to enable advanced diagnostics of neighbourhoods in complex urban morphologies regarding their impact on both car dependence and public health. As Co-Investigator, he was recently awarded an external fund with the American University of Sharjah and RMIT Melbourne focusing on high-density housing in the UAE and their impact on public health.
Research Summary
Dr Wiedmann has been conducting and supervising research in following projects:
- Governance transformation in the GCC: The role of freehold property markets in changing urban morphologies in the case of the Kingdom of Bahrain.
- Emerging knowledge economies in the GCC: The role of advanced producer services and their employees in changing urban morphologies due to new neighbourhoods and workplace agglomerations in the case of Doha, Qatar.
- Migration and housing patterns in the GCC: The role of different migrant groups and their housing and lifestyle preferences in Qatar and the UAE.
- Transit-oriented development in the GCC: The role of new metro stations in forming neighbourhoods and new spatial practices in the case of Dubai and Doha.
- Post-war housing estates in Germany: The role of post-war mass housing estates in contemporary urban contexts and their production of spatial practices.
- Edge city formation in Beijing: The role of new neighbourhoods in planned edge cities to foster integrated urban development.
- Council housing estates and their space production in the United Kingdom: The resulting spatial practices of four distinctive eras in the contemporary urban context of Nottingham.
- Medium to high density housing solutions in the United Kingdom: The exploration of different open space strategies and housing typologies in the contemporary urban context of Nottingham and London.
- Best practices in forming neighbourhoods and communities via contemporary housing strategies in European cities: The role of partially open, connected, and shared courtyards.
- Integrated community building in Shanghai: A comparison of historic neighbourhoods from the 1950s and contemporary neighbourhood trends.
Selected Publications