BS: Charette, Sharette Question???

Subject: RE: BS: Charette, Sharette Question???
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 06:34 PM

I think I have partly answered my question-
This seems to be where the term came from, but who and what were the 1980s groups? Did anything ever get beyond the talk?

"At the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, the world's top architectural school in the 19th c., professors would circulate with carts to collect final plans. Students would jump on the cart with their work, frantically finishing up their drawings."
In the mid-1980s community planners had adopted the name to describe a multiday community planning session. "A charrette assembles a multidisciplinary team typically consisting of planners, citizens, city officials, architects, landscape architects, transportation engineers, parks and recreation officials and other stakeholders to create a design and implementation plan.
One strategy ...is tme compression ..."

http://www.city.whitehorse.yk.ca/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC=%7BE2A7CDD0-D84C-406D-B578-251B0E859D40%7D

Subject: RE: BS: Charette, Sharette Question???
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 06:11 PM

Yes, Peter, but where and from whom did that definition come from? What design studios? Where?

Especially for Bobert- get eddycated about this.
Earn a charrette system certificate in this course offered in Canada:
NCI Charrette System TM Certificate-
"The NCI Charrette Institute (NCI) is a non-profit educational institution. They teach professionals and community leaders the NCI Charrette System, a design-based, accelerated, collaborative project management system that harnesses the talents and energies of all interested parties to create and support a feasible plan. NCI advances the fields of community planning and public involvement through research, publication and facilitation. And, they help people build community capacity for collaboration to create healthy community plans."
For more information on NCI: www.charretteinstitute.org

Part of the Continuing Education Program at Olds College, Olds, Alberta, Canada.
http://www.oldscollege.ca/programs/ContinuingEducation/ag-land-environment/nci-charrette-system-certificate.htm

(Olds College is primarily an agricultural, horticultural, animal husbandry and environment institution, but also is a venue for short courses in many subjects)

Subject: RE: BS: Charette, Sharette Question???
From: Peter T.
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 05:49 PM

The origin (as I recall) is a reference to carts covered with assignments that were rolled into design studios more or less at the last minute to make a deadline.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Charette, Sharette Question???
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 05:42 PM

Curious about where this usage came from. A new use for an old word. Anyone know?

Charette, charet- a wheeled vehicle; a war chariot. From Old French, been in English usage since c. 1400. So says Oxford English Dictionary.
Charrey (oy)- carriage, or transport vehicle for an army. In English since c. 1300s. A related word.

The evolution of the word to mean what is discussed here is logical, but who dunnit?

(Not in Webster's Collegiate, 10th edition, the latest I have).

Subject: RE: BS: Charette, Sharette Question???
From: Peter T.
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 08:05 AM

I've been in a number of real charettes -- they are, as mentioned, intense working sessions, usually with people who have some expertise (architects, designers, artists) on the problem at hand. The degradation of the term is exactly the same thing that happened with "workshop" -- hardly anyone now remembers that a workshop was once somewhere where someone made something, like shoes!!! Like practically all these things, they are bureaucratized attempts to pretend linguistically that some serious intense work is going to go on communally, when they are really just one more meeting to push paper around.

A good charette, however, is real work.

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Charette, Sharette Question???
From: katlaughing
Date: 10 Jul 09 - 07:06 PM

I love MUdcat! These are the best kind of threads. Thanks for the further info and discussion, folks!

Subject: RE: BS: Charette, Sharette Question???
From: Bobert
Date: 10 Jul 09 - 06:39 PM

Well, leeneia, yer right... I can spell all the words correctly that I can spell correctly... The ones I can't spell, ahhhhh, are the other ones...

Thanks, Dani... I'll keep the "charrette" in mind...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Charette, Sharette Question???
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 10 Jul 09 - 06:25 PM

Bobert doffs the mask! He can spell when he wants to.

I knew it!

Subject: RE: BS: Charette, Sharette Question???
From: GUEST,Dani
Date: 09 Jul 09 - 06:21 PM

I'm not sure you're wrong, Bobert. That's exactly how I've heard it used... often! It's just that in my experience it's been used and abused, and therefore seems hackneyed to me. But it's a cool word, and the idea it is intended to convey is so worthy, that I feel like a heel being so snarky.

Dani

Subject: RE: BS: Charette, Sharette Question???
From: Bobert
Date: 09 Jul 09 - 05:53 PM

Seems it is more related to physical stuff, like building and urban palnning, etc...

I'm working on putting together some folks to talk about coming up with a "brand" for the Town of Luray...

Me thinks this is the wrong term...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Charette, Sharette Question???
From: PoppaGator
Date: 09 Jul 09 - 03:00 PM

Here's the 149-page document that resulted from the Gentilly Community Planning Charrette held in the spring of 2006:

http://www.gcia.us/documents/charette.pdf

The public involvement that was a major part of this project is not essential to a charrette. I believe that the term is used for the same kind of team effort in architecture schools and firms, wherein the professionals and/or students work together on assigned projects under deadline pressure. Some kind of critique or feedback may be involved, resulting in a series of revisions, but more typically on the part of an individual client (or, in a school setting, a faculty board) rather than the general public.

Subject: RE: BS: Charette, Sharette Question???
From: PoppaGator
Date: 09 Jul 09 - 02:13 PM

We had several of these around the New Orleans area during the first year after Katrina. In each case, teams of volunteer architects and city-planners came from around the country for a couple of weeks, set up a shared workspace, toured a particular devasted area, came up with ideas for rebuilding, and worked up drawings, etc., for slide-show presentation to the public.

After a couple of days working among themselves to create an introductory presentation, the public was invited to come see the proposed rebuilding options and provide feedback. The team would take this new information into account, make revisions while also working up new proposals incresing the scope of the overall project, and prepare another presentation (typically, two evenings later.)

The charrette that I attended lasted about 10-14 days, with public meeting/presentations every other weeknight. The meetings were in a large church, and the team of visiting professionals had their workspace in the adjacent school. We (of the local populace) were invited not only to the formal evening presentation/discussion meetings, but also to drop in during the daytime to observe and discuss the actual working of planning, etc.

In our part of town, the net result was a highly detailed document outlining a fairly ambitious vision of a better-than-ever rebuilt community. Now, two-and-a-half years later, it has become clear that many of the more ambitious aspects of the plan are not going to happen, but many ideas that came out of the exercise have influenced actual rebuilding that has taken place ~ especially work that could be done by individual property owners on their own homes and businesses. (Those aspects of the overall vision that would require action by city or state government were less likely to occur in real life.)

The final document from our charette in the Gentilly neighborhood was posted on the web as a book-length PDF file, as was a similar document that resulted from an earlier charette in suburban St. Bernard Parish. I don't know if these documents are still available ~ I'll go look, and post links here if I find anything.

Subject: RE: BS: Charette, Sharette Question???
From: gnu
Date: 09 Jul 09 - 01:15 PM

kat... "–noun   a final, intensive effort to finish a project, esp. an architectural design project, before a deadline."

In engineering it's a final, intensive effort to get paid for a project, esp. by an architect, before your bank manager asks you to "come in and talk".

Subject: RE: BS: Charette, Sharette Question???
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 09 Jul 09 - 11:11 AM

Thanks for the link, kat. I see that both 'charette' and 'charrette' are possibilities. (The word is related 'chariot' to imply speed.)

If history is any guide, Americans will spell it one way and Brits the other, and then they'll tease each other about it for the next 200 years.

Canadians will say 'eh?'

Subject: RE: BS: Charette, Sharette Question???
From: GUEST,Dani
Date: 09 Jul 09 - 08:29 AM

I think it has become trendy to use this word to mean a community meeting called to deal with a particular question or project that affects "stakeholders" (the other trendy word you'll hear in conjunction with it, I'll bet).

Typically (but not necessarily), it's a longish, facilitated, work-shop-type event. Should we put a park here, or there? Should we build the skyscraper on Main Street?

Dani

Subject: RE: BS: Charette, Sharette Question???
From: Bobert
Date: 09 Jul 09 - 07:30 AM

Thanks, kat...

Subject: RE: BS: Charette, Sharette Question???
From: katlaughing
Date: 08 Jul 09 - 11:48 PM

2Rs, 2Ts, from Dictionary.com:

char⋅rette [shuh-ret]

–noun
a final, intensive effort to finish a project, esp. an architectural design project, before a deadline.

Subject: BS: Charette, Sharette Question???
From: Bobert
Date: 08 Jul 09 - 07:41 PM

Okay, I can't find this word in the dictionary but it is pronounced "char-ette" and it is some kinda think tank meeting/ presentation/ I doono???

Anyone heard of it and how it is spelleed and what exactly it is???

B~