Associate Professor Course Director for the BSc in Architecture and PhD Researcher
Oliver is interested in the ways in which maps can activate public space. His fieldwork focusses on exploring territories repeatedly on foot, with a range of participants, conducting walking interviews and recording details and traces of everyday life. Subsequently observations and discoveries are combined in walking maps with other factual and poetic data encouraging members of a broad public to revisit and reclaim lesser public spaces. Oliver created and produced the Lea Valley Drift project for London Legacy reuniting local communities with the Olympic Park and introducing visitors to the wider rewards of the River Lea beyond the park. He has subsequently worked with Kensington Palace and the Design Museum on a walking project in Kensington, West London and has organised a series of walks, exhibitions, documents and space activating performances across London since 2005.
Alongside his role as Course Director for the BSc in Architecture at Reading Oliver is currently pursuing his PhD broadening the theoretical base to his mapmaking and fieldwork: investigating the value of mapmaking in asset finding, the relationships between walking and thinking and the status of the map as evocative object. He presented his paper: ‘Drawing Maps: Systems and Disruptions’ at Disegno 2018 in Belgium, created and screen-printed a new propositional map for Barcelona in 2019 and co-organised a week long post-graduate public space development workshop: ‘Urban Come-On’s’ for the University of Antwerp, with Dr Penelope Plaza, in 2020.
Outputs and Publications
· Urban Come-On’s 2020: Public Space development workshop and proposal (2020)
· Barcelona Transversal 2019: Screen Print, artefact (2019)
· Disegno 2018: ‘Drawing Maps: Systems and Disruptions’, paper presentation (2018)
· Power and Wealth: Walks and Maps created for the Design Museum and Kensington Palace, London (2016)
· Lea Valley Drift paper published by ARQ (2015)
· UKC Riverine Conference: Lea Valley Drift presented at the Riverine Conference, University of Kent. (2014)
· AHRA Transgressions Conference: Lea Valley Drift presented at the AHRA Conference, UWE (2013)
· Maps and Book Lea Valley Drift: Publication by LLDC. Distribution of 5000 maps in conjunction with ‘The Wick’ newspaper to mark the opening of the Queen Elizabeth II Olympic Park (2013)
· Research development opportunity testing response and interaction in public space. UCA funded. Mobile installation, 3mm plywood, 4000 folded Tyvec cones, exhibition at Pop Up Space, presentation at the Whitechapel Gallery. Supported by ‘Better Bankside’ (2010)
· Book Contribution with LMU ‘National Architecture Student Festival 2008’ (2009)
News
· Social Value Research Facilitator – KTP Associate
· FINAL REPORT: Promoting Eco-Social Value at Orts Road & Newtown, Reading
· Study on the Value of Design and the Role of Architects
· Reflections on the Orts Road Community Fun Day