Ashley Glesinger
Student

Thesis / Spring 2021

This thesis demonstrates parafiction as one productive method of exercising architectural imagination. I define parafiction as a type of fiction that begins with a fact and is presented as a fact in order to demonstrate what the world could be. To demonstrate parafiction as a productive technique of exercising imagination in architecture, this project consists of a short mock documentary, website and archive that are presented as factual. The outputs of the project follow my journey of discovering a self-taught female architect from the same rural Nebraska village where I grew up. This narrative is constructed from found photographs, newspapers, letters, and objects, carefully curated interviews and simulated architectural drawings. The artifacts are recontextualized and re-presented to create an alternative narrative and richness to a seemingly unassuming place.