5 Design charettes

The process of taking individual generic patterns one by one, getting them right in isolation, then gradually adding them to a “bank” of good patterns, is quite different from the process that used to be followed in the late 20th-century community design: the so-called design charette.

The problem is, that this charette procedure creates an illusion of communality and of understanding without necessarily creating the real thing: true understanding. Because the drawing comes too fast, it is playful, creates a sense of participation. However, the actual design is then inevitably drawn by the architect in charge, and is at best an interpretation — often differing widely from what people meant — that gives enormous license to the architect to draw his/her own fantasy in place of the real intention of the community members.

This is the danger in software design, too. Having recently moved from listening to users at all (before software was mostly designed based on the system’s needs), software developers create a similar illusion of understanding by discussing use cases, but still primarily think in how these use cases can be implemented in the given system constraints.

At its worst, the practice of design charettes is a kind of political scam which is meant to create the sensation or impression of cooperation and collective work — but actually does not. This rather postmodern approach, in which it is the image of what is going on that matters, not the reality, can be disastrous, and I have seen cases where it is little better than disgusting.

A drawing is not a good medium for a process which requires serious and mature reflection, one item at a time. […] It needs to be thought through carefully, debated and considered, with pros and cons expressed.

What will make people walk up and down this important pedestrian street? This issue depends critically on the precise positions of parking lots, relative to the beginning and end of the pedestrian street. That kind of problem, simple enough to understand, yet relatively complex to get right, cannot find a real expression on a charming collective drawing. Yet getting it straight is just the kind of thing which needs to be part of the collective vision, since it is on this real matter, which is hard to implement, that the success or failure of the pedestrian street place will ultimately depend.

And even the clock tower hides a deeper, and possibly important reality: the idea that there may need to be “something to walk towards.” That idea is legitimate, and may well be shared; or anyway might be shared, after enough discussion. But the clock tower (to people who have never had one) is an image, a cure, private idea, Hollywood in nature, not something truly collective. Yes, the abstract truth which lies behind it might indeed be an element in a shared collective vision, and could be captured by words and by careful discussion. But as an element in a drawing the clock tower itself is in its nature somewhat childish, not general enough and unlikely to fuel true success. It may be harsh to say it, but it is just not deep enough to become part of a mature collective vision.

We tend to discuss abstract concepts with specific examples, where the examples stand in as metaphors to understand the general principle. It is easy to take a specific example as what is important, but the map is not the territory and by choosing examples too rich in detail, we create images in people’s minds that might be too specific and restrict the intended general principle too much to reach agreement. We need to align our thoughts not just on content, but also on the level of abstraction.

In short, it is only when generic centers — patterns — are considered one by one, carefully, thought through, envisioned, that people can arrive at things which are then mutually satisfying, realistic — a genuine part of their vision for the world. And it is only then that they are likely to be shared.

#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/8 Forming a collective vision of a neighborhood#

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