The Cuyler-Brownville Design Charrette ~Part One: Project Overview~

               Recently I participated in a collaborative design charrette hosted by SCAD. The goal of the charrette was to design a single family, contextual, environmentally friendly, low income home in the Cuyler-Brownville historic district of Savannah, Ga. The charrette was funded by a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the project stakeholders included the Historic Savannah foundation, the USGC, and Habitat for Humanity int'l. Hopefully this project will act like a blue print for future collaborations between the National Trust, Habitat, and the USGBC in other communities. SCAD wanted this project to promote collaboration between the Architecture and Historic Preservation students. As a double major I found myself wearing two hats (fashion statement?).

             The project was Spearheaded by the Historic Preservation students. The architecture students involved in the project (myself excluded) where all volunteers. They joined us for the three day design charrette and then disappeared. This was the first preservation class I have ever taken which rivaled my Architecture studio in terms of time commitment and I had absolutely no life this quarter was very excited about all of the great networking opportunities that came from this project. The preservationists where responsible for all of the preliminary contextual, historic, and site research. After the research was compiled and distilled, It was presented to the architecture students and the project stakeholders, and followed by a three day long design charrette.

            In preparation for the charrette my Preservation planning class, was divided in to four survey teams to and each survey team focused on researching a different aspect of the community. The four teams focus respectively on the neighborhoods architectural context, urban fabric, social/cultural context, and history. I was the leader of the Architectural Survey team. We documented and identified the character defining features of the local architecture and common architectural styles. We also summarized the neighborhood's design guidelines and zoning ordinance. For the benefit of the charrette participants I produced a booklet of basic design considerations. which included a mock up project budget and a list of suggested materials.

  

 Sample pages from the design considerations booklet: