Innovation 30 Insider
BIM, BUILDING DESIGN
bash, bosh
BIM — building information modelling — is allowing designers to imagine buildings in new ways, and revolutionary new building materials are allowing them to turn those dreams into reality. Peter Clucas asks how this is changing the look and feel of our cities
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MIPIM NEWS SPECIAL REPORT
MARCH 2018
B
IM, OR building information modelling, has been with us for a while. The general principles are explained by CBRE director Howard Vander Borght, who leads the engineering services, projects and design group. “BIM is a huge topic,” he says, “but it is essentially having a virtual model of a building running alongside the real thing. So all the various designers — structural engineers, architects, services engineers — design their elements, putting it together into an integrated model. The BIM model knows that a boiler is a boiler and a window is a window, not just a series of drawn lines. Attached to each object is data — everything you need to know about each one. In the design process, the model, along with the data, gets more defined. The whole idea is that the building gets constructed from the model information.” CGIs and 3D printed models can be generated straight from BIM files. And because BIM works in three dimensions, the routing of services through a building is simplified, and the designer can create more complex shapes, knowing that the model and the design team can cope. All of this saves time and avoids errors later in the process. Ian Bogle of Bogle Architects sees BIM “not as a ‘design tool’ per se, but more of a ‘collaboration tool’.” He adds: “We still sit around the table sketching on tracing paper before committing to the computers. However, as a way of quickly changing and challenging ideas to check against the reality, we see BIM as a progressive tool.” Here is the fundamental advantage of BIM, perhaps. It takes a lot of the routine graft out of producing a set of plans and instructions for the construction of a building. This allows designers to spend more time exploring options, thereby improving the quality of their work and the buildings we see around us. Jonathan Allwood, director at architects Barr Gazetas, agrees: “It’s no secret that BIM’s greatest attribute is its ability to allow for greater cross-discipline communication: everyone is working off the same platform, with access to the same information. BIM allows us to design, test and visualise elements quickly in 3D. However, new forms or material options ultimately rely on the imagination and creativity of the people involved in a project, as well as the competency and skills of those around them.”