Design Workshops

Design Workshops range in application from one-day educational exercises with non-binding outcomes, to ‘in-house’ design initiatives across a few days, to week-long and much more rigorous multi-stakeholder design exercises for extremely complex urban projects.  Design workshop formats involve several collaborative design sessions with invited stakeholders, who work with the design workshop staff in mixed professional teams of 6 to 8 people to produce site-specific design solution/s.

The Design Workshop format can address highly complex and challenging projects such as the Southwest Sydney Enquiry by Design Workshop of 2003, which planned an urban extension for a population of about 250,000 (with ESD among the principal urban designers).  One key difference between such an intensive design workshop and a charrette is that the design workshop usually engages invited stakeholders only, whereas the charrette is wide open to the public during key meetings.  Another difference is that design workshops actively engage selected stakeholders in collaborative design sessions, while the stakeholder numbers in a charrette usually limit their collaboration to design reviews and ‘open studio sessions’.

 

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