In May RED will be hosting a 'charette' (co-sponsored by the London Climate Change Agency and the London Energy Partnership) in the lead up to our 'pink' project on energy efficiency. The question that I am now faced with on a nearly daily basis is - what the $%*& is a charette???.....
The term 'charette' evolved from a pre-1900 exercise at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in France. Architectural students were given a design problem to solve within an allotted time. When that time was up, the students would rush their drawings from the studio to the Ecole in a cart called a charrette. Students often jumped in the cart to finish drawings on the way. The term evolved to refer to the intense design exercise itself. Today it refers to a creative process akin to visual brainstorming that is used by design professionals to develop solutions to a design problem within a limited timeframe. (Thanks to Carnegie Mellon University library website for such a fabulous definition.)

CATEGORY: DESIGN METHODS