FROM THE LEXICON - CUDC Quarterly 1:1 - Fall 2000

Charrette

In a field with more than its fair share of jargon, it’s hard to think of a single term more distorted, mis-used and abused than this one. Roughly speaking, the term "charrette" is used to describe a brief intensive design event, a kind of brainstorming session with the goal of getting lots of ideas on paper in a short time. That’s fine as far as it goes, but it leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Some charrettes (like the one discussed on this page) may be study sessions preliminary to the formulation of any particular design project. Others might occur in the preparatory stages of a larger design process. Then there’s the issue of public participation. The term is often used these days to describe any meeting in which designers elicit public input in the design process, whether or not the meeting is set up to generate actual design proposals. How a charrette is organized and what it is intended to achieve can vary dramatically, to the point where one would almost like to abandon the word altogether.

As if that weren’t confusing enough, why is this design activity called by the French word for "little cart"? For the explanation, we must journey back to Paris in the 19th Century, when students at the French Academy, the École des Beaux Arts, would labor up to the last minute on the beautifully rendered, large scale drawings that they entered in the Rome Prize competition. Victory in the competition virtually guaranteed a major career in the highly centralized French architectural establishment, so a lot was riding on the students’ projects. The "charrette" in question was thus a little cart that went around to the various studios and carried off the drawings to be judged. A designer was said to be "en charrette" (a term still in use) when he actually jumped on the cart to put finishing touches on his work. So now you know. The history only helps so much, though, since its relevance to what we call a "charrette" extends only so far as both involve being pressed for time --which architects always are.