Today was charrette day. All of us posted up in a conference room in the Cigar Factory where thoughts, concepts, opinions, and ideas were swirling around the room and somehow made their way onto paper. We began by listing all of the possible features that we believe, as a studio, should be included in the master plan which we will present to the Charleston Parks Conservancy next Wednesday. The list was pretty extensive so narrowing it down and grouping them into different categories was key. Additionally, we had to consider some less obvious, but equally important factors such as, the safety of the site, water, electricity, trash, parking, and circulation. After establishing what exactly on the site would remain in the plan (community garden and baseball diamond), we generated five main categories: the garden, dog park, playground, pavilion, and sports area to begin master planning.
Research on similar precedents and parks nearby helped us determine what percentage of the total area each of these groups would occupy. The 50’x50’ gridded site map that was drawn made it easy to lay everything out spatially. We then broke into 2-3 person groups to produce bubble diagrams of the potential placement of these categories and will continue this very iterative process until we establish four or five options to share with the client. Group charrettes seem to be pretty rare in architecture school these days, so it was a fun and productive day!
