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Charrette defined

The term “charrette” is derived from the French word for “little cart.” In Paris during the 19th century, professors at the Ècole de Beaux Arts circulated with little carts to collect final drawings from their students. These beautifully rendered, large-scale drawings were to be entered in the Rome Prize competition. Victory in the competition virtually guaranteed a major career in the highly centralized French architectural establishment, so a lot was riding on the students’ projects. The "charrette" in question was thus a little cart that went around to the various studios and carried off the drawings to be judged. A designer was said to be "en charrette" (a term still in use) when he actually jumped on the cart to put finishing touches on his work.

Roughly speaking, the term "charrette" has come to describe a brief intensive design event, a kind of brainstorming session with the goal of capturing lots of ideas on paper in a short time. The term is often used to describe any meeting in which designers elicit public input. This creative, intense work session focuses more on the ideas behind a developing school design, than on the final design details of the building itself. Facilitators hope to foster possibilities rather than foreshortening them, attempting to generate new understandings about how we learn and where we learn.

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