Genevieve Parkes

Mending Memory / Dreams in Decay

This thesis investigates how the philosophy and techniques of the visible mending movement can be applied both to an architect and a landscape.

The project began as a deep fascination with the unique social and environmental questions posed by emerging development of California’s Lithium Valley. The shiny new promise of a “white gold” rush in the desert falls into a long pattern of extraction and speculation in the region that has devastated it both ecologically and socially time and time again.

Mending Memories / Dreams in Decay integrates traditional crafts such as quilting, sashiko stitchwork, darning, and embroidery to propose a strategy of memory-making and narrative spatial design that address physical degradation, celebrate both history and fantasy, and promote mindful engagement with the landscape by embracing environmental scars.

Drawing parallels between the landscape and the body, this thesis establishes mending not as an operation to be applied, but as an ideology that recognizes a perpetual state of flux between creation and destruction.

Mending Memory

Mending Memory

Mending Memories / Dreams in Decay integrates traditional crafts such as quilting, sashiko stitchwork, darning, and embroidery to propose a strategy of memory-making and narrative spatial design

Mending Memories / Dreams in Decay integrates traditional crafts such as quilting, sashiko stitchwork, darning, and embroidery to propose a strategy of memory-making and narrative spatial design