By AMANDA THOMAS

ajt008@latech.edu

 

Thirty fifth-year architecture students assembled on the third floor of Hale Hall on Sept. 30 to begin what one fifth-year student described as “an extended brain storming session.”

The students would spend the next 24 hours working together without interruption or outside disturbances.

The time was 5:30 p.m.

When the students first gathered for the charette, Lisa Peddy, a fifth-year architecture student, said everyone was really hyper, silly and laughing.

“A charette is a 24-hour intense work period set aside for the fifth-year students to plan out the initial design for their fifth-year project that will take the rest of the school year to complete,” Peddy said.

This year’s project is to design and construct a house for a family through Habitat for Humanity, an organization that builds homes for needy families.

The level of excitement from everyone who was ready to help the family could be felt at first, Peddy said.

But by 9 p.m., the mood quickly became intense when the students divided into groups of about five or six and started working on the project.

Amy Zeringue, a fifth-year architecture student, said there was definitely a level of competition because each group wanted its idea to be chosen.

“People would start shouting ‘Intruder alert, intruder alert’ whenever anyone from another group would get close to their project,” Zeringue said.

As the night quickly turned into day, Zeringue said each member could feel the energy of the group slowly starting to go down in intensity.

Peddy said the five groups got to work building models and making floor plans in preparation for their 8 a.m. presentation to the architecture faculty.

Near lunch time, Peddy said, the faculty decided to combine the five separate projects into two new projects to be reorganized and redesigned.

After four more hours of work, Peddy said it was rounding 5 p.m., and everyone was brain-fried and they decided to call it a day.

Peddy said the group met again Oct. 2 for a critique and then again last Friday for the final presentation and decided which would be their chosen design.

David Yount, a fifth-year architecture major, said the end of this process is only the beginning for them.

“Now we have to move from less design to more construction,” Yount said.

There are many things they have to do in order to complete the project, Yount said, such as investigate materials, plan budgets and get permit codes.

Yount said, “There are a lot of obstacles or challenges, but it’s all a big learning process.”