The Give and Take of a Charrette

After sending out numerous invitations and publicizing the meeting times, the charrette began. We were extremely pleased with the turn-out. New urbanism was a new concept to many people in this area. Haile Village Center is a nice example of traditional neighborhood design for a village, but Brytan is larger and it to be designed as a town. The difference involves providing more of the daily needs within the town boundaries. The charrette opened with a presentation by Duany where he explained many of the concepts of new urbanism. He explained the importance of pulling the buildings up to the streets, of creating vistas at the end of the streets, of on-street parking to provide a barrier between the pedestrians on the sidewalk and the vehicles on the street. Traffic calming is an important element in creating a truly walkable community. It is interesting to note that people are in favor of slowing down the traffic in a general sense but they don’t like to be slowed down in their daily commute.

The individual meetings took place with discussions of building placement and the role of neighborhood parks. Other topics included architecture and the importance of having homes that have “eyes on the street”; so many homes are designed today where once a person enters the home, he has no connection to the neighborhood until he leaves the next day. Wide front porches and windows help create a connection that serves an important role in establishing community. However, once the connection is made to the neighborhood, you have to still find a way to protect the private realm for the homeowner. Elevating the house so that windows are not at eye-level help provide privacy from the street. Also, the role of interior courtyards helps promote an outdoor private realm that homeowners can enjoy without the hassles or expense of large yards. With the increasing importance of water conservation, smaller yards are an important asset to the home. People need to be able to enjoy the outdoors so the location of recreational elements was an important feature of the overall design of the community.

Opinions were shared and designs were modified. Each day, the design would be “posted” on boards that people could stop by, review and comment. We were surprised at the number of people that truly followed this process and took the time to try and understand why a building was faced in a particular way. The design of Brytan was to be open and inviting to its neighbors, not a fenced or walled off subdivision that is frequently built. It was interesting to see how some of the neighbors wanted to be able to visit Brytan and interact with the community but others wanted to have Brytan separated and completely unconnected from their land. Through the give-and-take of the charrette process, a compromise of sorts was reached. Brytan has been designed so that future connections could be established if those neighboring groups so decided.

After a week of intensive meetings and design work, two plans emerged from the charrette. Duany wanted to tweak both plans for a bit and then allow a determination as to which one best met the overall objectives.

Remember, at this time, the regulations of our County did not allow mixing uses vertically nor were TNDs encouraged.