Meet Josh Mulford: The accidental and brilliant Canberra architect

Some creatives have a whimsical tale of their journey to their craft – perhaps a lightning bolt of inspiration, an overwhelming calling, or even finding an unexpected muse that makes their purpose come into crystal-clear view.

Architect Josh Mulford jokes that his pathway to architecture can instead be labelled as, “fairly haphazard”.

Born and bred in Canberra, he was surrounded by creativity and design growing up. His mum was a keen painter, one of his two sisters is a graphic designer, and the other is a photographer and art curator.

After finishing school and, like many, having no clue what he wanted to do, Mulford applied to law school but took a gap year working and travelling through the UK, Europe, Scandinavia and North America. 

He says it was somewhere between seeing more and more buildings, and a friend back home starting architecture studies, that Mulford started thinking he might like to take that path himself.

He moved to Sydney to study, fitting in plenty of work experience at architecture firms in Sydney and Canberra along the way. 

During his final year of study, Mulford got a job at the award-winning Chenchow Little Architects practice in Sydney and ended up working there for seven years

“It was a pretty key part of my training and practising architecture,” he says. “The thing I liked about working there is they focused on small architecture – so, new houses, alterations and additions, office fit-outs, and the odd big building.”

Being smaller projects, Mulford says he would be involved in the overall design and also the building process: “The kind of nitty-gritty detail and technical aspects of building. 

“We’d run the projects from start to finish, so it was a great, rewarding way to work and see these designs actually get built and be involved the whole way through.”

From there, it was a move to the larger, renowned commercial firm Bates Smart, where Mulford worked for two years on bigger projects, from hotels and student accommodation to office buildings and multiresidential towers.

He became an associate but, in the back of his mind, loved the idea of starting his own practice.

In 2021, during what was still the peak COVID-19 lockdown period, Mulford was presented with a couple of project opportunities, so he took the plunge and started Josh Mulford Architects.

He specialises in small-scale residential and interior projects and says he loves the intimate scale.

“I like a level of detail and craft, which I think is really important,” Mulford says, adding he finds it rewarding “designing for people in their most important space, like their home or where they work”.

“I think architects, ultimately, are problem solvers,” he says. “And the challenge is to solve the key problem, or problems, in an efficient, elegant, beautiful way. That’s what I like to do. I just like making beautiful houses.”

Through his designs, Mulford is passionate about sustainability, although he takes what he calls an “old-school approach”.

“Not every house can be kept, but as a starting position, I like to try to work hard to keep an existing house if we can, and work with what we’ve got, and then improve it.

“I think that’s the best way to ultimately achieve sustainability; keep the fabric of buildings.

“Often there’s this bells-and-whistles approach to sustainability, like [adding] solar panels and battery storage, which are great things, but if you’ve knocked down a perfectly fine house and rebuilt a brand-new house, then that process has kind of almost defeated the purpose.”

It’s an approach that can be firmly seen in Mulford’s first couple of projects: Banksia House, a family beach house on the NSW North Coast; and Betty House, the revitalisation of a ex-govvie house in Curtin.

He has more projects in both Sydney and Canberra in the works, and another upcoming project could be a much more personal one. 

Mulford, his wife and two kids are soon coming back to Canberra after 18 years in Sydney. They’re moving into a 1950s monocrete cottage in Ainslie they bought a year ago.

“I’ve always loved living in Canberra,” he says. “[The home has] got a garden and a chicken coop and a fig tree. So all the things we wouldn’t get in Sydney.”

For now, Mulford says the house is completely liveable but there could be some element of transformation in the future. He admits he was sketching ideas for the house before they officially bought it.

Whether for his own house or his projects, Mulford creates high-quality designs without taking things too seriously. 

“I like designing uncluttered, calm spaces, using natural materials,” he says. “I’m really into the idea of craftsmanship; that fine-grain detail and expressing the assembly of elements and how they all come together and put on a show.

“And then I also like to tone down the seriousness of what architects’ work can often be like, and I like to introduce something unexpected or playful into a space. Something fun, which makes it relaxed and comfortable to live in.

“I think often people can find architects a bit hard to approach and I like to think that I’m not like that at all.”