Collage, Architecture and Space
A one-day symposium to be held at Technical University Munich
8th June 2022

As Jennifer A. Shields writes: ‘The practice of collage has the capacity to capture spatial and material characteristics of the built environment…’ (Collage and Architecture, 2014: 2). It presents the architect with possibilities, rather than limitations, of experimentation and to think through the challenges of limited space. It allows styles and textures to be overlayed, to co-exist, to contradict and compliment one another and to play with the hypothetical space rendered in two dimensions, all the while mimicking the material quality close to the original. Whether as a metaphor for the architectural form, a creative device, or a planning technique, the relationship between collage and architecture is one that stretches back through time and across distinct geographies, encompassing everything from the collagic spatial collections of the wunderkammer to Marshall Brown’s collages made from post-war architectural photography.

As is always the remit of the Collage Research Network, we seek to open up discussions of collage—here applied as a catch-all term for any composite form—through decolonised, queered, feminist or historically re-imagined perspectives. We invite papers which look at collage (in its variant forms) from any time period and geographical location to explore how collage has been used in architectural practice and as a form of space. We welcome papers from art history, architectural history, architectural practice, design, arts-based practice and research, and we encourage early career scholars and students to present their work.

Topics may include but are not limited to:
- Collage in architectural practice
- Collage and space-making
- Collage as design strategy
- Historical uses of collage in architecture
- The politics of collage and architecture
- Collage and the collection

Abstracts of no more than 300 words, along with author biographies (no more than 100 words), should be submitted to collageresearchnetworkgmail.com, by 5pm on 4th March, 2022, with the subject: “Collage, Architecture and Space”. Submissions should be in English. Please do not submit any images with your proposal. Submissions from collectives and/or jointly written/presented papers are also welcome. Please use the following format when naming your document:
“Last Name_Short Title_CRN” (e.g. Bloggs_Collage and Architecture_CRN).
If you have any questions, please get in touch with us at the above e-mail address.