This thesis repositions storytelling as a critical tool for decoding the cultural, historical, and community narratives embedded in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, reimagining its spaces as thresholds where collective memory and speculative futures intersect. By transcending conventional urban design frameworks, it constructs a dreamscape that merges reality and fantasy, transforming the neighborhood into an abstract, visitor-centric narrative shaped by desire, perception, and imagination. Through speculative architectural cons, the project interrogates how altered spatial identities challenge preconceived noons of place, culture, and belonging, while advocating for design practices that harness fantasy to reveal layered histories. Ultimately, it calls for architects to re-envision their agency in scripting urban environments as dynamic palimpsests, fostering inclusive dialogues between past, present, and speculative possibility.
Reimagine Chinatown
