FROM THE DISTANT PAST / Two Design Charettes to Remember

AIA UK Newsletter Issue #01 - dated May 1994 – announced the formation of the 1st International AIA Chapter on 17 Jun 1993, ‘In the Beginning…’.  As there are several months left in this our 30th Anniversary year, we still have time to celebrate the past, to delve into the archives and see where and when the DESIGN CHARETTES started.   

From Newsletter Issue #04 dated Feb 1995 (extract below),  the first Design Charette with 75 students was held in Eero Saarinen’s previous US Embassy on Grosvenor Square in the days before security concerns prohibited general access to US government buildings.

LOOKING BACK AT THE 1994 DESIGN CHARETTE

The 1994 Participants / The Venue  One can only wonder where those first 75 students are now.  How many continued on a potentially glorious, potentially rocky career in architecture?  Given free student membership to the fledgling Chapter, how many ever became AIA members? How many of them thought about their own foray into embassy design when the replacement US Embassy was eventually opened years later?  Unlike one 1994 ‘fantasy solution’ mentioned in Newsletter #04, the new scheme does not include a baseball diamond… but it does have a fantasy façade…

The 1994 Team Leaders  Whereas the student participants are not named, some of the AIA UK team leaders were, and in later years they became increasingly important to London’s architectural community.  

Both Lee Polisano FAIA (who heads PLP Architects) and Pierre Baillargeon AIA (who is now MD of Mixity and has been an active Charette Team Leader on and off since 1994) remain in London as AIA UK Members. David Walker RIBA (who heads David Walker Architects) also remains in the UK, whereas Yann Weymouth FAIA returned to a very successful career in the US.  

The 1994 jurors   The 1994 Honorary Chairman was the US Ambassador to the UK, Admiral William Crowe; however, it is assumed that the actual jury work was conducted at least in part by the then Chief Architect of Foreign Building Operations, Patrick Collins AIA, who remained with the US State Department until at least 2015.

A distinguished group of new jurors are selected each year, with the Design Charette organisers keen for them to represent a diverse range of practitioners and educators.  However, one 1994 juror - Peter Finch OBE, then Editor of the Architect’s Journal - kept a keen interest in the Charette and continued in the Chief Juror role until 2012.  He remains Editorial Director of AR and AJ but is also now Programme Director of the World Architecture Festival and Deputy Chair of the Design Council.  

LOOKING BACK AT THE 2000 DESIGN CHARETTE

The Sponsors The 6th Design Charette - ‘High Dense + City Living’ - was held in 2000, based on the highly trafficked West Kensington Underground Station. The focused environs were near the Olympia warehouse of Call Print, the Charette’s (and the Chapter’s) long term sponsor and the Charette was held under the auspices of its enthusiastic and ever popular Manager, Steve Jolly.   

The AIA UK Board Member and event organiser, Yasin Visram (who now lives in Canada), prepared an excellent, comprehensive summary of the event, which was published as a bound brochure courtesy of Call Print (see HERE). Unfortunately, the format has been difficult to copy, but it remains a remarkable souvenir. 

The 2000 Jurors and Team Leaders For the 2000 Design Charette jury, Peter Finch and Steve Jolly, were joined by several distinguished practitioners, including the then up and coming architect Zaha Hadid.  The 2000 Team leaders were Christopher Stead, Michael Morgan, Paul Wellings-Longmore, Lester Korzilius FAIA, Martin Hall, Matthew Farrell, Peter Seidel AIA, Charlie Baker and Mike Hardiman AIA – several of whom are still familiar to AIA UK members after all these years.  One student participant – Amy Kaspar AIA – is now an AIA Board Member in Columbus Ohio and still in contact with AIA UK. 

Newsletter Issue #34 - dated Jan 2001 (see HERE) – devoted an entire page to the Event.  In the extract below, Peter Finch likened the arrival of the jurors to the excitement of the Stirling Prize.  It was not quite that important an event but was certainly still newsworthy as was the main topic of the day – ‘environmental sustainability’. 

The 2000 Star Attraction Zaha Hadid visited the warehouse  during the day and soundly chided the students - from Sheffield, Portsmouth, Greenwich, Westminster, Cardiff, Kingston, RCA, the Bartlett, Southbank, and North and East London (plus exchange students from Milan, Durban, Halifax and the US) – for not taking DESIGN seriously enough.   

Thanks to Yasin Visram and Steve Jolly an exclusive record of Zaha Hadid’s unique thought process remains.   Whereas other jurors kept simple notes on their jury cards, she took the time to draw futuristic thumbnail sketches with cryptic titles – ‘sugar cubes’ for the first one; ‘calm chaos’ for the last one; and ‘shining city’ along the way…  Did any of the student’s  designs inspire her future work? Or vice versa?

For many years – up to 2019 - the Design Charette was sponsored by the Roca Gallery and held in a building fittingly designed by Zaha Hadid as an unintended but well received legacy of the event.  Hadid remained an honorary member of the AIA UK Chapter and, on 27 Sep 2007, was given the President’s Award by then Chapter President Kevin Flanagan AIA in recognition of, ‘your office’s contribution in promoting excellence in design; as well as your past contributions of time to the AIA/UK Chapter and the AIA internationally’.  See her AIA UK Newsletter obituary HERE.

For the past several years, the Design Charette has been organised by Nicholas Kehagias AIA, who was himself a student participant back in 2009.  Perhaps participation as Charette student, team leader or juror is a right of passage all should consider…
More on past Design Charettes can be found in the AIA Newsletter Archives, found HERE.  Look for issues covering the last months of the year.

Written by Lorraine King, AIA