One thing that makes charrettes fun and creative is that you never know where the best ideas will come from. A recent and now famous example is the story of the “Katrina Cottage.” Six weeks after hurricane Katrina ravaged the gulf coast in 2005, hundreds of national and local professionals and community members participated in the Mississippi Renewal Forum. This massive six-day charrette was sponsored by the Governor’s Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal and conducted by Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company with The Congress for the New Urbanism. It was here that the design for the now famous Katrina Cottage was born.

This award winning design emerged not by the hand of one of the many world famous designers in attendance, but at the desk of Marianne Cusato, a young New York architect. Marianne was one member of a team of designers working on an alternative to emergency trailer housing. Marianne’s design of a tiny 308 square foot cottage captured the attention of everyone at the charrette and eventually nationally. The Katrina Cottage was a product of the flat organization of the charrette in which the best ideas are allowed to come to the top. It is not uncommon for groundbreaking solutions to come from unexpected sources. In a charrette, every idea is allowed a moment during which it must stand against many other alternatives. Each alternative is judged by a consistent set of Objectives, Measures and Strategies (see The Charrette Handbook, p. 34). In this way, the charrette promotes exceptional design solutions rather than unexceptional “designs-by-committee.”