Brown, Marshall

American, b. 1973

BiographyAs a practicing architect, professor of architecture, artist, and theoretician, Marshall Brown believes that architecture is a “cultural medium,” with the capacity to connect concrete pasts with imagined futures. In his series Chimera (2014), Brown cuts and pastes images of twentieth century postmodernist, dadaist and constructivist architecture to create new urban landscapes. The word chimera has two meanings: one is a fire-breathing beast from Greek mythology comprised of lion, goat, and serpent body parts; the other is a more nuanced term that is synonymous with illusion or fantasy. Brown’s works takes on both interpretations of the word, combining historical and iconic buildings into new fantastical realms of impossible structural standing.

Marshall Brown has been included in exhibitions at Western Exhibitions, Chicago (2016); the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2017); the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; and the Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles; among others. His work is held in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA and the MoCP. He has been an Associate Professor of Architecture at Princeton University since 2018.