Architects’ Guild pursues follow-up charrettes

The Architects’ Guild came into existence three years ago, intent on selling stock house plans, generating other avenues of work for new urbanist traditional architects, and helping those architects to make a growing impact on the built environment. Seventeen architects are now members. The Guild’s leader, Stephen Mouzon in Huntsville, Alabama, hopes the number will grow substantially. One kind of work the Guild is introducing is an architectural charrette for new urban projects. “Alys Beach, west of Rosemary Beach in the Florida panhandle, was the first place where we used the new model of holding an architectural charrette,” says Mouzon. “The architectural charrette occurs a few months after the planning charrette,” he notes. The ideal time for an architectural charrette, he says, is when “the plan has had time to gel and possibly be past some of the approval hurdles, [and when] the developer is comfortable that it will become a reality.” Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. planned Alys Beach in a June 2003 charrette. In January 2004 the architectural charrette took place. “It offered the client and DPZ the opportunity to further clarify the project’s vision at the level of individual buildings,” says Xavier Iglesias at DPZ. “It also offered a talented group of architects an opportunity to learn from each other (something that rarely happens on such a scale, because it is so expensive to bring together so many designers) and to efficiently coordinate their designs with the adjacent buildings.” Mouzon says, “The focus of the architectural charrette is a number (usually 12 to 36) of primary residential units that the Town Founder intends to become the core of his initial unit offering to the public. The units are also intended as seed buildings for the town.” As used by DPZ, the architectural charrette is overseen by a small DPZ team but staffed primarily by members of the Guild. Presumably other new urban firms could also call upon the Guild for charrettes of this sort.