Cyril Mardall (né Sjöström) was born in Helsinki, Finland on 21 November 1909. He moved to England in 1927, trained at the Polytechnic of North London and the Architectural Association, and briefly worked in Finland on an Olympic stadium competition. In 1944 he co-founded Yorke, Rosenberg & Mardall, which became a leading British architectural firm, specialising in schools and housing for public authorities, notably Hertfordshire County Council.
Architect Cyril Mardall (né Cyril Sjöström) was born in Helsinki, Finland on 21 November 1909, the only child of the Finnish architect Einar Johannes Sjöström and his English wife, Phyllis Eleanor (née Mardall), an opera singer. Educated in Finland, he travelled to England in 1927 to visit relatives and decided to remain, becoming a naturalised British citizen in 1928.
Mardall studied architecture at the Polytechnic of North London from 1927–31. Despite his mother’s financial constraints, his talent secured him a scholarship to the prestigious Architectural Association (AA) Schools in London, where he was awarded his diploma in 1932. Following his graduation, the Great Depression limited professional opportunities in Britain, prompting a temporary return to Helsinki. There, he worked in the office of Ole Gripenberg on a competition entry for the Olympic Stadium intended for the 1940 Games. Their design achieved second place; had they won, Mardall might have remained in Finland. Instead, despite offers of work from Alvar Aalto and a scholarship to Cranbrook from Eliel Saarinen, he returned to London in 1933, where he set up an independent practice in Bedford Square and taught part-time at the AA until 1939. His early work drew on Scandinavian prefabricated timber construction, bringing consultancies and housing-related commissions. For Lord Forrester he designed (unbuilt) terraces and a community centre for the Subsistence Production Society at Brynmawr in Wales and timber farm cottages for the Gorhambury estate, near St. Albans. Shortly before the Second World War he also supervised the erection of around 200 timber houses in Scotland as part of the government’s response to the housing shortage.
Alongside his professional practice, he became active in the circles that shaped British architectural modernism. He joined the Modern Architectural Research (MARS) group and served on the AA Council (1948–51), and he was elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (ARIBA). His teaching at the AA placed him within a technically and socially engaged student culture. In the later 1930s he led AA ‘Unit 15’ (then still using the name Sjöström). As discussed by Elizabeth Darling, students in Unit 15 criticised the Modern Architectural Research (MARS) Group for an approach they felt prioritised form over the social and political conditions of building, arguing that modern architecture needed to respond to the period’s ‘immense building needs’ (Darling 2007, p. 223).
During the war Mardall served as an intelligence officer in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR). In 1944 he was seconded to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), heading a section concerned with European rebuilding. That same year he entered the partnership that would define his public legacy. Together with F. R. S. Yorke and Czech émigré Eugen Rosenberg, both committed modernists and fellow members of the MARS network, he helped form Yorke, Rosenberg & Mardall, initially a relatively loose association in which the partners retained responsibility for separate projects, while meeting regularly to discuss one another’s work. The practice later became widely known as YRM, and its growth reflected the scale of postwar reconstruction and the expanded role of the state as a client. By the late 1940s he had adopted the surname Mardall (his mother’s family name).
At YRM he focused on housing and education, working mainly for public authorities, especially Hertfordshire County Council. He designed over 40 schools and several technical colleges: in the 1950s his work often showed a Scandinavian influence (as at Queensmead Secondary School, Ruislip, with timber cladding to the upper floor), while in the 1960s he developed repeatable brick-and-concrete schemes for Essex schools, including in Basildon and near Thurrock. He also designed the Finnish Seamen’s Mission in Bermondsey/Rotherhithe (1958). More broadly, YRM became one of Britain’s leading post-war practices, delivering public-sector housing, schools, hospitals, and airports in a forthright modernist style. During Mardall’s partnership the firm’s work ranged from the Sigmund Pumps factory, Gateshead, and the London Transport depot at Loughton, to major commissions such as St Thomas’ Hospital and the University of Warwick, and airport projects including Gatwick. The partnership grew and formalised its organisation after moving to new offices in Greystoke Place in 1961, later evolving into a public company and, eventually, being absorbed into a larger international practice.
After retiring from YRM in 1975, Mardall continued working in private practice with his wife, the architect June Bosanquet (also known as June Park). Cyril Mardall died in London, England on 1 June 1994. In 1992, the RIBA Heinz Gallery presented the exhibition In the Line of Development: F.R.S. Yorke, E. Rosenberg and C.S. Mardall to YRM, documented in a catalogue by Alan Powers. In 1995 his work was included in the seminal exhibition A Different World: Emigre Architects in Britain: 1928-1958 at the same venue. In the UK public domain designs by Mardall and his wife are represented in the RIBA library.
Irene Iacono
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Cyril Mardall ]
Publications related to [Cyril Mardall ] in the Ben Uri Library