Computational charrettes: An early collaborative design method for computational design

Abstract

Charrette is an education and collaborative design method that dates back to the 1800s, the École des Beaux-Arts. It is a quick drawing session that is centered on improvisation and bricolage. However, the definition of charrette has changed throughout the past few decades. According to Willis (2010), the new forms of charrette have been employed as a brainstorming technique in the early stages of collaborative design to forge consensus, establish the project vision, and begin the design process. This thesis proposes a new conceptualization of charrettes, "Computational Charrettes", that combines computational design with the early brainstorming characteristics of the new charrettes and the improvisational characteristics of the older ones. Thus, it can encourage experimentation, productivity, spontaneity, and innovation while acting as a collaborative computational design reasoning tool. The thesis aims to conceptualize a theoretical framework for Computational Charrettes and investigate the methods and tools that can support and arrange them. In order to establish the framework, the thesis investigates and links the two vital elements of Computational Charrettes, improvisation and brainstorming. The thesis explores tools, digital environments, and computational design methods to create a scene for improvisational performances during Computational Charrettes. The improvisations performed during Computational Charrettes quickly and intuitively express the objectives and goals of the team members, which expedites the design process and enables co-authorship. Since improvisation is all about attentiveness, real-time, and being in the moment, our hypothesis contends that it is only possible to provide an improvisational scene by discussing and presenting a post-phenomenological framework of improvisational acts, also due to the involvement of techné and technological context. With the aid of the post-phenomenological framework, the thesis investigates brainstorming stages and settings which can support improvisational reasoning and "making". The thesis examines the "integrated" and systematic formulation of the brainstorming stages and environments to respond to the holistic complexity of computational design together with conceptual design in an early design environment. Finally, the thesis aims to provide a charrette system and the protocols of this system based on the new conceptualization of the charrettes we suggested.