Day Three (Monday) Spent the first part of the day with the crew critiquing the preliminary house designs (everyone fancies themselves an architectural critic), then trying to gather the base maps (aerial, AutoCAD file, an early plan from 2000), and preparing for contingencies (Google Earth map, etc,). Then off to meet with the manager of [...]

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Day Two (Sunday) Overcast start to the day – humidity boiled away by the sun, by 10 AM. Another lengthy day – we eat lunch at 3 and dinner around 10 PM so bedtime is midnight or later. Today a meeting with the engineers who work in Tubas, about 5K to the west, about the [...]

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Day One (Saturday) The birds seem to be holding a chirping contest sitting on the wire outside the classroom that’s our charrette studio. Full day after meeting with the three families who gratefully accept a simple house with a few cultural requests (privacy at the entry in case the woman of the house is not [...]

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Sitting in the common room – our dormitory – about 4:30 AM under a neon light because I couldn’t sleep with skinny, ignored dogs barking all night, then call to prayers starting at about 4:15 and hot already at least to a Californian! One of my roommates is an architect from Ramallah, successful but also [...]

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The National Charrette Institute is participating in a charrette for Rebuilding a Future in Palestine, a project sponsored by the Rebuilding Alliance. This week, architects, engineers, designers, filmmakers and diplomats are all converging on the West Bank Palestinian Village of Al Aqaba to work with villagers on a charrette to design their future homes, even though 90% of [...]

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The Contra Costa Centre Transit Village is a prime example of the power of the charrette to transform a community. The project now in phase three, is fast becoming a poster child for Transit Oriented Development. In 2000 the County decided to use a 6-day charrette led by Portland firm Lennertz Coyle and Associates, to [...]

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NCI led a 4-day charrette for the Arapahoe Square area just north of downtown Denver in January. Planning Manager, Peter Park, saw that the charrette was the right tool for this area, challenged by large expanses of parking lots, a regional thoroughfare dividing the neighborhoods, and a concentration of social service providers. In addition to [...]

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The Creekside is a unique and complex area of London, with diverse natural and cultural resources. Although a number of good design frameworks have been produced, there is no existing mechanism whereby an integrated design response can be developed, tested, consulted on and jointly agreed. Therefore, site owners develop plans in isolation and often find [...]

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Beginning May 13, citizens throughout the seven westernmost counties of North Carolina and the Qualia Boundary will collaborate with a national team of experts to create a “Tool Box” of guidelines for responsible planning and development in the mountains. Even if you live outside the study area, The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina believes [...]

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Below is a link to a video of a charrette final presentation. In this case, the client, Montgomery County, requested that the consulting firm running the charrette, Glatting Jackson, tape the final presentation of the charrette so that it could be posted online for local residents to view. Edward Erfurt provided us with the link [...]

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