Behind the Design

Dan Mader, CEO of Fanning/Howey Associates Inc., discusses how the firm uses the design charrette as a forum where community members can share insights and concerns with the architects. The term charrette is derived from the French expression "en charrette," which means "on the cart." Specifically, the reference is to Ecole des Beaux Arts architecture students in 19th century Paris, who carried their design projects to jury competitions in carts, working along the way until the last possible minute. Today, the charrette process implies a collaborative, creative design session, usually performed within a compressed schedule. The use of multiple design teams enables architects to achieve several different solutions to a particular design challenge.

Joe De Patta: What exactly is a design charrette and how does a school district benefit from having one?

Dan Mader: A charrette is not a new process; it’s been around a long time. What has helped us rejuvenate it and bring it back into practice is the use of technology. Clearly, it’s easier for us to conduct these workshops with computers and plotters and all that.

Essentially, a charrette is an intense design work session with one team or multiple teams-we prefer to use multiple teams-that starts with a building program and, in a very quick fashion, two or three days at most, attempts to get initial concepts for a project. The key to it, from our perspective, is doing it in a public setting. We have community members, students, faculty, administrators, and business people-anybody who wants to be involved-actually come to those sites and participate in the process.

The charrette process offers many advantages. For one, it is a highly visible way to kick off a project. It generates a great deal of enthusiasm from all the people who are actually involved. A subliminal message would be that it is a confirmation to the community that this is going to be an open process. We are starting out that way and will continue that way. It gets people directly involved and it overcomes that first question that most people have, "Will they listen to me?" It is remarkable.

Community involvement in a design project is not really a new trend. We’ve been advocating it, along with a lot of our peers, for a number of years. But it is still amazing how many times we go into a project and start this dialogue process and have people say, "This is amazing. Nobody ever listened to me before."

The other advantage to a charrette process, if you do it with multiple teams the way we do, is that each one of the teams is doing a completely independent design solution. So, it’s one way to explore multiple options very quickly. What comes from that, always, is a very clear identification of what the major concerns are going to be as we continue to develop this project. Everyone comes to the same conclusions.

JD: What can the community expect as an end result?

DM: The first is an energized community with a high level of excitement about their project. Obviously, the other point is that you will have multiple design solutions to review and consider. Often there will be one concept or possibly a combination of concepts that resonate with people. That gives us a good jumpstart on the more detailed design process. It is beneficial for the client, because we get a lot of good ideas, and it also helps us. It clearly identifies many concerns at the very beginning of the project.

JD: Why is it so important to involve the community and the students in the design of a school?

DM: The building is theirs. Everyone should have an opportunity to contribute ideas to a facility in which they will live and work and, as I said, we get good ideas from these sessions. In one sense, it’s pretty self-serving. We get good feedback that only people who live and work in a community would be able to tell us. It might not be an architectural idea, but we find that because of the intensity of the people giving opinions and telling us their needs, we come out with a pretty good crystallization of the community’s values. Some of the more esoteric ideas are a big benefit, along with some of the suggestions for architectural solutions.

JD: What techniques do you use for reaching out to the community to get them involved in the charrette?

DM: There are all sorts of public relations avenues, one being newsletters. In Washington, D.C., there were television spots promoting this concept. We’ve made good use of the media to expose people to the fact that a charrette is happening.

The next major issue is that the event has to be located someplace that’s convenient for people. We never have them in our offices, for example. They have to be within the community. In a project in Fort Recovery, Ohio, we actually rented a vacant storefront downtown and set up a charrette studio. That was a pretty exciting and dynamic thing. Fort Recovery is a smaller community, so it was highly visible and everybody knew where it was.

JD: Are all districts open to such ideas? If not, how can their minds be changed?

DM: Not every district wants to go through this process, that’s probably true. I think, in many cases, they think it’s going to take too much time. In reality, it’s a time saver. Sometimes that connection just can’t be made.

We have a number of examples that we try to share, where there was a lot of community involvement in a project and how that directly led to a more successful project. One of our higher profile efforts with community involvement is in Medina, Ohio. The project was an addition and renovation to the high school. We had a tremendous amount of community participation, more so than just a charrette process. It was a very successful project from a design standpoint, but even more so within the community, because of the process.

JD: What groups or individuals do you think should be involved in the design/planning/conceiving process?

DM: If you look back, historically the people who have tended to be involved are teachers, administrators, parents, and students. They are the daily users of the building. We are branching out and really embracing the rest of the community: senior citizens groups, the YMCA, hospitals, libraries, and the city administration. All of those community groups can impact how the building is going to be used. We treat the school as a community center instead of just an educational facility.

JD: Is there a limit to how much involvement the community and students should have? What are the drawbacks to their involvement, if any?

DM: The limitation is only to the extent that we, the architects, still have to manage the process. We all have to meet a schedule and a budget. We can’t take an unmanaged approach to the charrette.

It’s not really a drawback, but we have an understanding that’s clear in the beginning; we make sure everyone knows that not every idea generated by the program will be accommodated in the design. It is going to be a community effort and we will have established priorities and, ultimately, the board of education has to make a decision on how many ideas can be brought into a project.

JD: Can so many active members adversely affect the process? Is the budget affected?

DM: I don’t think you can have too many ideas in the beginning. There’s no such thing as a bad idea, as long as all the ideas are collected, managed, and prioritized. If you maintain a managed approach, you can control it from a time standpoint and a budget perspective. Ultimately, everything has to be weighed against the over arching values of the community. That’s what’s great about establishing all of that information at the beginning of a project. Now you have a benchmark by which to measure a particular request. "Does this fit the values that have been accepted for this project and does it fit the delivery of the curriculum as it is proposed?" You have to have a way to measure all requests.

JD: Are there different expectations of involvement across the grade levels?

DM: Obviously we get more sophisticated answers and observations from older students. High school students give us a lot of great input. They are involved at the beginning stages of the process and they can be continuous members of the design team. At the elementary school level, if you’re dealing with first graders, you are looking at more "big-picture" ideas.

A cute example; we were working with a group of first graders, I believe, and we asked, "What do you want at your school?" Well, they wanted a whale tank. Obviously we couldn’t do that, but it told us they wanted a little more excitement. You have to interpret the younger kids’ viewpoints.

JD: Explain how buildings can be used as a learning tool?

DM: That’s something in which Fanning/Howey has been very interested for a long time-how we can use a new building or a renovation or an addition as a tool to enhance the environment. We’ve done a lot of thinking about this. We tag it as three different methodologies.

The first one is intrinsically. We believe that the building design is a tool to enhance the educational environment by the arrangement of the classrooms, the use of technology, security systems, and environmental systems. All of that leads to improved learning. We understand this intuitively and now there is more research available that proves that quality educational facility designs do impact learning outcomes.

The second methodology is during the construction project. It is novel and exciting and visual. Students relate to it directly, particularly if they can observe the construction as it is proceeding. From a teacher’s perspective, to use the construction process as a thematic approach to the delivery of curriculum is a great opportunity. We’ve worked with drafting classes that were plugged in while we were doing the project and they do concurrent projects on a smaller scale, such as a section of the building. There are tons and tons of ways to see this process going on and incorporate it into the educational environment.

The third method is more literal. The building is a constant and literal tool for learning. A number of schools have outdoor learning labs where they have used environmental issues like wetlands and been able to incorporate those as a learning environment rather that treating it like a "pond out back." Those spaces are actually designed as part of the learning environment.

JD: What about liability issues for students on the job site?

DM: You do not mix students with construction. If you were to bring them on the job site, you’d have to check with the insurance companies and then go to the site at a time when construction is not occurring. You have to create a very controlled environment.

JD: Do these workshops and programs work just as well with remodeling and renovations as with new school construction?

DM: It works great from a student’s perspective. They know their building inside and out. They know where the problem areas are and they have definitive ideas about how to improve a building. It’s not so much a big-sky-theory as it is when you’re doing a new project, but they have personal experiences they can bring to the table.

For example, we had a project in Upper St. Claire, which is a suburb of Pittsburgh, and the renovation project was to be done in phases. The students were actively involved in helping us phase this thing so that it would work best for schedules, student traffic, and things like that.

JD: How can these techniques be applied to higher education facilities?

DM: It works the same. We did one at Concordia Theological Seminary in Michigan. The project was a new library. One of the issues, in addition to the design, was the location of the library. We had design charrettes for multiple locations with people from throughout the campus. All of the groups that exist on a college or university campus become the community parallel to a high school.

JD: What trends do you see evolving from these workshops? What do you find encouraging or exciting?

DM: A trend is more and more involvement of the global community. The involvement of teachers, parents, administrators, and board members is still important, but there is a larger community. Those other groups-seniors, health care providers, librarians, performing arts groups-all have a role in this process.

Another major trend that comes from the charrette process is more active partnerships. The hospital will come in and manage a wellness program or the YMCA will run the recreation programs. Another example is the local library forming a joint venture with the high school library. It becomes an ongoing community of relationships. A good example of that is in Twinsburg, Ohio. There is a detailed community involvement program where different groups are actually operating portions of the schools.

Also on the scene is sustainable design, which goes beyond energy conservation and begins to address how a school impacts the environment as a whole. How is the building sited? Are there better ways to control water runoff? What materials are being used? There is an entire genre of discussion occurring about what is being called "green design."

JD: What trends would you not want to encourage?

DM: I don’t think it’s a trend, but the antithesis of community involvement. That would be the old way of doing projects in isolation.

JD: What one or two things would you say have most surprised you as a result of the charrette workshops?

DM: One is how quickly people can really get to the core of an issue. You would think that for many, it is a new experience, looking at drawings and trying to understand these broad concepts. It is amazing how rapidly people get into it and understand it and have very germane points to make.

Also, even though this is a very intense two or three days with long hours and a lot of preparation time beforehand and a lot of work behind the scenes after the fact, preparing for the next day, it is a heck of a lot of fun!

JD: Do you have any final comments or anything to add?

DM: Just that I would encourage people who are considering a design program to go through the exercise of involving as many people as possible in the development of that design program. It really pays benefits in the long run.