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Joshua Mardell

Dr Joshua Mardell

  • Admissions Tutor, School of Architecture
Email joshua.mardell@rca.ac.uk

Dr Joshua Mardell (he/him) is an architectural historian.

Joshua’s work is thematically wide-ranging spanning the 19th and 20th centuries. Key research interests include queerness, histories of conservation advocacy in the UK and USA, and hereditary issues (or, “dynasticism”) in architecture. Primarily biographical and archive-centred, his work critically (re-)examines hitherto unchronicled—often colourful and off-beam—protagonists in the history of architecture. He is a vociferous advocate of historic buildings conservation and thrilled to call the Darwin Building in Kensington (a Grade II-listed landmark built 1960-63) his academic home.

A further aspect of Joshua’s work is in the service of other people’s texts as co-editor of the Journal of Architecture (Royal Institute of British Architects). He is also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Key details

School, Centre or Area

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Gallery

  • Curation of a display at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, on the architectural historian Gavin Stamp

    Curation of a display at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, on the architectural historian Gavin Stamp

  • Launch of Queer Spaces at 66 Portland Place – panel comprising Joshua Mardell, Elizabeth Darling, Kit Heyam, DJ Ritu and (joining virtually) Adam Nathaniel Furman. May 2022.

    Launch of Queer Spaces at 66 Portland Place – panel comprising Joshua Mardell, Elizabeth Darling, Kit Heyam, DJ Ritu and (joining virtually) Adam Nathaniel Furman. May 2022.

  • The oldest surviving blackball machine at the Society of Antiquaries of London, the subject of research on architecture and exclusion.

    The oldest surviving blackball machine at the Society of Antiquaries of London, the subject of research on architecture and exclusion.

  • Contact sheet of photographs of the rural architect John Voelcker (1927-1972)

    Contact sheet of photographs of the rural architect John Voelcker (1927-1972).

  • ‘Friends of Cast Iron’ pins, part of research on the activist and cast iron prophet Margot Gayle (1908-2008).

    ‘Friends of Cast Iron’ pins, part of research on the activist and cast iron prophet Margot Gayle (1908-2008).

  • Dynastic Agency: the Buckler dynasty of late Georgian and Victorian architect-antiquaries

    Dynastic Agency: the Buckler dynasty of late Georgian and Victorian architect-antiquaries

  • A provocative gazetteer of York, a 20th century city

    A provocative gazetteer of York, a 20th century city

More information

Architectural Reference Book of the Year, Booklaunch Architectural Book Awards (2023) for Queer Spaces: an Atlas of LGBTQIA+ Places & Stories. 

The Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects Architectural Book of the Year Awards (2023) Winner [City/Country guide] for  Queer Spaces: an Atlas of LGBTQIA+ Places & Stories. 

Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain Colvin Prize, nominee, with Adam Nathaniel Furman for Queer Spaces: an Atlas of LGBTQIA+ Places & Stories. (Shortlisted)

Brian Cohen Essay Prize from the Oxford Architectural and Historical Society, 2018.

'Finding a Historiography for Gavin Stamp', present, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

MRes 2022-23 group project: 'Betty and Lady Margaret' on the architects Betty Cadbury-Brown and Lady Margaret Casson.

Books

2025 “Victorian Architecture & Dynasticism”, Studies in Victorian Architecture and Design volume 9. (Editor)

[Forthcoming, 2023] ‘Architectural Dynasties’, Studies in Victorian Architecture and Design, (Liverpool University Press).

(With Adam Nathanial Furman [edited]) Queer Spaces: An Atlas of LGBTQIA+ Places and Stories, London: RIBA Publishing.

Articles

Mardell, J. (2022) ‘Blackballing Buckler: the letters of John Buckler (1770–1851), the Carter school and the foundations of the Buckler dynasty of antiquarian artists and architects’, Antiquaries Journal, 102. doi.org/10.1017/S0003581522000038

Mardell, J. (2020) ‘Getting into a Scrape: The Buckler Dynasty, Lincoln Cathedral and Mid-Victorian Architectural Politics’. Architectural History, vol. 63, 191-218. doi:10.1017/arh.2020.5

Mardell, J. (2019) ‘On how we ought to be anarchists’: Pat Crooke, John Turner, and dweller-oriented architecture’, Journal of Architecture, vol. 42(6), 829-852. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2019.1686409

Mardell, J. (2018) 'Fidelis ad Mortem': J. C. Buckler, an Oxford College architect’, Oxoniensia, vol. 83, 73-92. http://oxoniensia.org/oxo_volume.php?vol=83

Mardell, J. (2013) ‘Far From the Madding Crowd: John Voelcker & Ruralism in Architecture’, AA Files, vol. 66, 87-99. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23595443

Selected Journalism

Mardell, J (2023) "Ever so 'umble, yet worth keeping", Country Life (December), 36.

Mardell, J. (2023) “Seductive Selections from the Gavin Stamp Archive”, RIBAJ (Mar. 2023): https://www.ribaj.com/culture/activist-scholar-gavin-stamp-archive-paul-mellon-centre-joshua-mardell

Mardell, J. (2019) ‘Cast Iron Reasons for Conservation’ [remembering Margot Gayle], RIBAJ (Nov. 2019): https://www.ribaj.com/culture/margo-gayle-us-architectural-preservation-campaigner-joshua-mardell

Mardell, J. (2019) ‘Pat Crooke 1927-2018’ (obituary): https://www.ribaj.com/culture/patrick-crooke-1927-2018-obituary-self-help-architecture-andrew-derbyshire-john-turner-bbpr

Mardell, J. (2016) “The Buckler Topographical Collection: a dynastical reading”, British Library Picturing Places project:

https://www.bl.uk/picturing-places/articles/a-dynastical-reading-of-the-buckler-topographical-collection

Book Reviews

Mardell, J. (2023) "Review of Jane Grenville, Pevsner’s Yorkshire, North Riding (Yale University Press, 2023)", Burlington Magazine 165 (November), 1256-1257.

Mardell, J. (2020) "Joshua Mardell on the I’Anson dynasty - The I’Ansons: A Dynasty of London Architects & Surveyors By Peter Jefferson Smith London", arq 24.3, 291-194.

Exhibitions

(2025) (With Yanqi Huang) “Architecture Unsung”, an exhibition on the former Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies in York (IoAAS), Borthwick Institute, University of York, April 2025.

(2023) An Activist Scholar: The Gavin Stamp Archive, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London: https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/whats-on/forthcoming/gavin-stamp-archive-display

Select Conference/Session Organisation

(2025) “Architecture’s Unsung Institutions”, Association of Art Historians’ Annual Conference. With Dr. Kim Förster (University of Manchester) and Yanqi Huang.

(2025) “Fiction, to Fiction, Fictioning”. RCA MRes Symposium. With Prof. Gemma Blackshaw. Invited guests: Hannah Regel, Naomi Pearce, Prof. Rebecca Birrell.

(2024) “Queer(ing) Space(s), from Antiquity to the Present”, Society of Antiquaries of London. October 2024. With Dr. Ewan Harrison (University of Manchester). Keynote: Dr. James Cahill.

(2024) “Queer X Time”, RCA School of Architecture Annual Research Programme, with Gem Barton.

(2023) 60th Anniversary of the Darwin Building, RCA. Public symposium. Invited guests: Stephen Bates, Patty Hopkins, Su Rogers, Hugh Strange, Clare Wright. Cadbury-Brown and Casson Oral History Symposium.

(2022) “Queer Spaces, from Finella to Sissinghurst”, The Twentieth Century Society. Invited guests: Elizabeth Darling and Jane Stevenson.

(2022) “Architectural Dynasties” lecture series, The Victorian Society.

(2021) Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, LGBTQ History Month programming.

Joshua has previously held teaching positions at the University of York and Queen Mary, University of London, and tutored on the Master’s of Architecture programme at ETH Zurich and the MArch thesis unit at the Bartlett, UCL.

He sits on the publications committee of the Victorian Society and has previously been active in the LGBTQIA+ network of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, and a long-term volunteer for the Twentieth Century Society.

For his PhD, Joshua held a doctoral research fellowship at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) at ETH Zurich. He was also Brian Allen Visiting Fellow at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven and Library and Archives Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London.

(2025) Society of Architectural Historians (USA), Atlanta, Georgia (April).

(2024) Architectural History and Theory Seminar Series, Edinburgh School of Architecture

and Landscape Architecture (ESALA).

The Architectural Association.

MAKE Architects.

Zaha Hadid Architects.

Haworth Tompkins Architects.

(2023) Christmas Miscellany Lecture, Society of Antiquaries of London.

University of Cambridge.

Victoria & Albert Museum (Friday Late).

The Farrell Centre, Newcastle University.

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).

Glasgow School of Art.

The Bartlett School of Architecture.

AHMM Architects.

(2022) Cooper Hewitt (Smithsonian Design Museum), New York.

California Preservation Foundation.

Milan Triennale.

Coast is Queer Festival, Brighton.

Birkbeck University.

Symposium on Architecture, the Urban, and the Politics of Public Space, York Centre

for URBan Research, University of York.

Karakusevic Carson Architects.

(2021) Royal Institute of British Architects Inclusion Festival.

The Victorian Society (UK).

Grimshaw Architects.

(2019) Architectural History Seminar, Lincoln College, University of Oxford.

Topographical Views Workshop, Stirling Memorial Library, Yale University.

(2018) The British Association for Victorian Studies, Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln.

(2017) ‘Writing Britain’s Ruins, 1700-1850’, University of Stirling.

(2015) Association of Art Historians, University of Edinburgh.

Syracuse University in London.

(2014) Association of Art Historians, University of East Anglia.