Despite its consistent presence in architectural practice throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, collage has never been considered a standard form of architectural representation like drafting, model making, or sketching. The work of Marshall Brown, an architect and artist, demonstrates the power of collage as an architectural medium. In Brown’s view, collage changes the terms of architectural authorship and challenges outdated definitions of originality.

Published in conjunction with the exhibition The Architecture of Collage: Marshall Brown at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the beautifully designed book features some forty collages by Marshall Brown. These works come from four of his collage series, including Chimera, Je est un autre, as well as the previously unpublished Prisons of Invention and Piranesian Maps of Berlin. Additionally, there are photographs of Ziggurat, an outdoor sculpture with a design based on a collage from Chimera. The full-color plates are supplemented with essays by critic and curator Aaron Betsky, scholar of art history and archaeology Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s curator James Glisson, and Marshall Brown that outline the conceptual foundations of Brown’s intriguing exploration of an intersection of architecture and art.


James Glisson is an art historian and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s curator of contemporary art.

Marshall Brown is an architect and artist. He runs his Chicago-based design practice Marshall Brown Projects and is an associate professor of architecture at Princeton University. He represented the United States at the 2016 International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. His work is held in the collections of major museums, such as the Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.