396 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in PedagogyB.I.M. in architecture
In recent years, there has been a recognizable shift in architectural design towards
the B.I.M. approach. Architects are increasingly adopting Virtual Models as tool to
develop their design. The BIM model aims to test design solutions. The inherent
wealth of this model, that exceeds mere three-dimensional modelling for visualization
purposes, contains basic information that will assist architects over design decisions.
The designer needs a dynamic model, easy to modify as the data collected demands it.
Therefore, the architect’s virtual model needs to be integrated in the design process,
used right from first drafts. Architects, by definition, start a project on a blank slate.
Their design develops without any prior project, unlike other specialities. Hence, their
model will be the basis for all subsequent projects. On the other hand, the architects
design activity is based on a solutions and test sequence, where each new idea is
perfected by way of testing it. Each design option, whether over space, structural,
materials or others, is submitted to some behaviour tests, verifying its validity. This
validation is done over all the elements and spaces of one project. One can even say
that architects have been developing, for hundreds of years, a Building Information
Model for each project. The only difference is that this model, this database, has
been transferred form the architect’s brain to the computers hard disk. With easily
recognizable advantages: reliability, speed, storage capacity, information recovery,
and above all, independent access from others. Clearly there are not only advantages.
Resorting to a virtual model as a design method implicates a change of attitude for
the architect. Intrinsic to these model requirements, design methods change. This
change, although inevitable, questions old practices and myths associated with the
creative act. Where this clash of methods becomes more evident is at the architecture
education level.
Architecture education
Architecture practice has always existed intimately associate to drawing. It is through
drafting that architecture student learn to see the world, and later to develop their
designs. In the analogical world of last the five centuries, drawing was the most
efficient way for architects to develop, test and communicate their ideas. The use of
perspective in a bi-dimensional simulation of a three-dimensional reality, resorting to
schematic floor plans, sections and elevations to depict complex realities, had been the
tools invented by the renaissance architect to be able to develop their craft. This work
methodology has taken root in the architectonic culture in such a way that drawing
and designing tend to get mixed up. This profession’s dogma, this undeniable truth,
is being questioned by computers. First by digital drawing techniques- C.A.D., later
by the ability to model in virtual environments, the very foundations of architecture
design have been shaken by these new technologies. This should not be considered
news. Other professions are disappearing or mutating, in its adaptation to societies
computerization. Why would it be different for architecture?
The most interesting questions that B.I.M. places on our profession of are exactly
those: Will the architectural profession, as we know it, be able to adapt itself to the