About
Oliver Houchell is a British architect. His academic and professional interests lie at intersections between architecture, structural and environmental engineering, landscape, culture, technology and art.
Oliver is an Associate Professor at The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, where he coordinates the Design Practice 2 and 3 Modules in Years 3 and 4 of The Bartlett’s pioneering Masters in Engineering and Architectural Design Programme. He is Studio Lead Tutor of DML Unit 4 in Year 1 of the same programme which is delivered in partnership with the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering (CEGE) and the UCL Institute of Enrivonmental Design Engineering (IEDE), and he is also Module Coordinator, Lecturer and Technical Tutor on the Year 2 Design Technology Module on The Bartlett’s BSc Architecture Programme. In addition to his academic roles at The Bartlett, Oliver is a visiting design and technology tutor and critic at the University of Westminster on its Undergraduate, Postgraduate and Masters Programmes.
Oliver works periodically as a specialist consultant for some of the world’s leading engineering firms including BuroHappold Engineering, ARUP, Entuitive (UK), Malishev Engineers and Hochtief (UK) Construction Ltd, and has served as a member of BuroHappold Engineering’s Design Review Board at their Head Office in Bath, UK. Oliver’s projects range from small scale private commissions to large scale, collaborative public projects with an increasing emphasis on research.
Biography
Oliver studied at the Kent Institute of Art and Design, now the University of the Creative Arts (1990-1992), and read Architecture at Oxford Brookes University (1992-1995). He started his career working on hand-drawn, high specification private residential projects as the Architectural Assistant to the Design Director at Collett Zarzycki (1996-1998) in London, and subsequently gained his postgraduate AA Diploma at the Architectural Association (1998-2000). Returning to practice he worked for Brookes Stacey Randall (2000-2001) where he was able to explore ideas initiated in his Technical Thesis at the AA through his work on a vehicular, cycle and pedestrian bridge over the River Stour on the Suffolk/Essex border, developing new digital modelling techniques directly determined by the bridge’s bespoke fabrication processes. Oliver worked on large scale academic, commercial and public buildings as a Project Architect for Allies & Morrison (2001-2004) while returning to the AA to study for his Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Practice, registering as an architect and gaining Chartered Membership of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2003. In 2004 he joined Wilkinson Eyre as a Bridge Team Senior Architect and for the next 5 years designed and delivered moving and static vehicular, cycle and pedestrian bridges internationally, contributing an article for AD 179: Manmade Modular Megastructures in 2006 which explored the implications of high-speed rail travel in the context of the technical design for the Viaduc de la Savoureuse TGV rail bridge in France, which he led as its Project Architect.
Oliver has worked for himself since 2009, when he also started to teach. His academic work is based on collaboration with some of the most progressive architects, engineers, artists and designers, and has become intrinsically related to his work in practice. Before working at The Bartlett, Oliver was a Part-Time Teaching Fellow at the University of Bath (2012-2016) and an undergraduate Design Unit Tutor and postgraduate Diploma and Masters Design Unit Tutor at the University of East London (2011-2013). Oliver has been involved in the University of Westminster’s annual digital fabrication festival FAB FEST since its inception in 2016, and has recently also been a First Year technical tutor on the BA Architecture Programme at the University of Greenwich (2020-2021). Over the past 12 years Oliver has been a visiting critic at The Bartlett School of Architecture, the Architectural Association, the University of Greenwich, Portsmouth University, the University of Westminster and the University of Bath.
In 2015 Oliver began to carry out research through drawing and writing. His work has been the subject of a solo exhibition in Broadway Market in London (2017), as well as featuring in collective exhibitions at Long White Cloud in London (2018) and at 10 x 10 for the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Article 25, (2018).