Design Charrette Facilitation Integrated, or 'whole building', charrettes establish a creative environment for identifying and incorporating strategies that result in projects that are designed and built to minimize resource consumption, reduce life-cycle costs, and maximize health and environmental performance across a wide range of measures—from indoor air quality (IAQ) to habitat protection—while also meeting expectations for security, accessibility, aesthetics, historic preservation, and other design objectives. There are many benefits of using charrettes early in the design process. Most importantly, charrettes can save time and money while improving project performance. In general, integrated design (ID) charrettes:
Provide a forum for planning the project with those who can influence design decisions to make sure early decisions avoid missteps—it is easier to set a course than to change it.
Provide an opportunity for lessons learned from previous projects to inform the planning process.
Kick off the design process.
Encourage agreement on project goals.
Save time and money by collaborating on ideas, issues, and concerns early in the design process to help avoid later iterative redesign activities.
Promote "collective enthusiasm" for a project with early realistic goals and directions.
The traditional architectural practice of cobbling together separate disciplines for a project, with little to no integration, is outdated in designing truly sustainable solutions that are better environmentally and economically. PLANNING PLANS DESIGN DRAWINGS DESIGN REVIEW BOARD REPRESENTATION