Browsing by Author "Nichols, Sarah"
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Item Architecture Sans Commodity: Food, Construction, & Social Capital(2022-04-21) Davis, Rylie Elizabeth; Nichols, SarahThis project investigates the architecture and social implications of the modern grocery store. The design of a food cooperative in Houston's Fifth Ward considers site, context, and building obsolescence through building tectonics.Item Fuzzy Collectives(2021-04-30) Sun, Xiefangzheng; Nichols, Sarah; Finley, DawnFuzzy Collectives is a strategically heavy-handed renovation project and a critique of contemporary Chinese cities - cities that are often too large in scale and too singular in program, with few true collective spaces. Fuzzy Collectives reacts to the modernist condition of bigness in contemporary China by proposing a series of demolitions, additions and renovations to ubiquitous planned-economy-era “microdistricts”. It attempts to effectively reconfigure these socialist housing blocks without a complete rebuild. Fuzzy Collectives looks to open up closed urban systems, create layered collective spaces, and generate long-term flexibility through converting single-program buildings into program neutral ones. It hopes to establish a density of activities- small businesses, workspaces, spectacles, and flexible housing options. Fuzzy Collectives is fuzzy in its program, its spatial layers, and in its reflection of Chinese notions of collectivity and individuality.Item Hydrosocial Spaces(2022-04-19) Chambers, Lindsey; Nichols, SarahThis project concerns the many forms of water in Houston. Existing in dual states—referencing Ivan Illich’s H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness—water is both life-giving and treacherous. Houston’s water exists as a resource for living and playing, in its parks, bayous, and public pools. Alternately, water threatens life and property, as the city has been developed too close to its waterways. This thesis reimagines Houston’s public relationship to water, considering the intersections of the cycles of water collection, purification, and use with infrastructures of recreation and water storage. Multiple kinds of water are dealt with across one site, offering an alternative to existing forms of retention and detention in Houston to create a new series of hydrosocial spaces that allow the public to enjoy water recreation and engage with many different points of the water cycle.