Moulshri Joshi

Moulshri Joshi is an architect and educator leading Space Matters, an award-winning design practice based in New Delhi. She has taught architectural design and theory for over a decade at the School of Planning & Architecture, New Delhi, her alma mater, and has served as visiting faculty at the Urban Ecological Planning program at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Her research interests focus on industrial heritage, with particular attention to the interpretation and reuse of old industrial sites. Joshi has a strong foundation in environmental, social, and political concerns of urbanism, working on projects ranging from safety audits of neighborhoods where children walk to school in Delhi to the conservation of contaminated industrial sites like the Union Carbide factory. Her work emphasizes curating complex, multistakeholder projects requiring empathetic and interdisciplinary approaches to solve both exceptional and everyday urban problems.

Joshi's scholarly output demonstrates a consistent focus on industrial heritage from both local and global perspectives. Her recent conference presentations examine how industrial disasters like Bhopal inform heritage interpretation, explore global-local dynamics in heritage sharing, and compare national approaches to industrial heritage management across multiple countries. These works reflect her commitment to understanding industrial landscapes as complex social, environmental, and political entities.

• Award-winning design practice (Space Matters)
• Member of South East Asia Advisory Committee of Ministry of Culture Taiwan
• Advisory Board member of Asian Network of Industrial Heritage (ANIH)
• Expert Member, Ministry of Climate Change, Environments & Forests, Government of India

Joshi has built significant professional networks through her participation in international heritage organizations and government advisory roles. Her work on the atlas of India's industrial heritage inventory (2012-2019) represents a major multi-year research project that combined academic rigor with practical field investigation of industrial landscapes across India. Through Space Matters, she bridges academic theory with professional practice, applying architectural methods to solve complex urban challenges.

Her professional practice spans both built work and research, with particular expertise in curating complex projects that require interdisciplinary approaches. Joshi's work on industrial heritage sites demonstrates how architecture can serve as a method for addressing both exceptional and everyday urban problems, particularly in contexts of environmental contamination and social vulnerability.