For the past half year or so I have been involved with heading the Revit portion of a BIM pilot program. For those of you not quite in with the whole BIM (Building Information Modeling) movement let me create a quick synapses.
BIM software (from the architectural side at least) allows the designer or whomever is piloting the computer to attach parametric values such as identification notes, weights, colors, etc, to building components. What the BIM software excels at is allowing one to track and schedule what components are being used in the project. This also allows one to track construction phases and cost estimates since the building model can be used to create the project with quantifiable amounts of materials.
What BIM software does not do is automatically illustrate how a building actually goes together.
I am not trying to romanticize the era when drawings were done by hand on vellum or mylar. I don't think the ammonia reproducer (or blueprint machine) was a particularly pleasant thing to be around. I do believe that when things were being drawn by hand there was a certain amount of care and attention paid to particular details which resulted in those responsible for details having to learn how a particular portion of the building (see window sill, or door head, etc) should be put together to function properly. There is also the necessity of learning what the components of a building (flashing, moisture barrier, vapor barrier, etc) are there to do, what order they are to be combined to work effectively, what there characteristics are and how, when combined, they are supposed to appear.
At some point during the mass transition to CAD (computer aided drafting) I think the intimacy of knowledge garnered from hand drawing started to fall by the wayside. CAD software allowed for the quick repetition of symbols and the shortsighted creation of details as existing simply as a series of connected (sometimes) lines.
Now parametric modeling rears on the horizon as becoming mainstream and again the question of proper building techniques becomes compounded. Without going into the reams of proper architectural BIM usage (I am not by any means an expert) there are certain assumptions that one has to make similar to utilizing CAD software, which is fine. My main concern is how the BIM software is perceived.
Already I have heard rumors of architectural schools training their students at an early time during their undergraduate years in BIM software to be used as a design and presentation platform and honestly this scares me. First because the software is rather advanced for early undergraduate usage by students who are still creating a foundation of presentation design. Secondly, the software itself is rather orthogonal (The most common platform Revit, is extremely orthogonal, almost annoyingly so. It takes a bit of practice to create intentional 3d shapes) so as to lending itself to being used for quick design one would argue that software such as Sketchup or even Rhino (again with a large learning curve) would be more apt. However I would like to argue that more basic design study, through physical modeling and drawing (and eventually photoshop), would be better used at the early years to teach fundamentals.
I suppose that by most regards I could be way off base, seen as a proponent of "the old guard" who still carries at least one sketchbook around at all times and finds the pencil still the most useful tool of my "arsenal". Well, maybe I am. However, I can sketch quickly on the train or bus, at the bar or a restaurant during lunch or even during a conversation with a colleague or client and that makes me the most versatile of all.
Sure CAD is a basic skill, no doubt necessary, that all students should grasp in order to make the pragmatic diagrams asked for during the design reviews, but is parametric modeling something to be instilled during the years of learning intellectual design and rigor or would that be best left for the classes in which construction techniques are taught and moved as far from the design studio as possible, to keep the minds agile, sharp and free?
Are we soon to be at the point where we can view a building and recognize the software platform it was designed in? Is architecture still about design or is it to become a commodity, to be quantified and calculated and added to a parametric spreadsheet?
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