You wouldn't think that 18th century religious architecture could help understand what BIM is all about, but it turns out that it can.
In his essay "The Freestanding Column and 18th century Religious Architecture" Antoine Picon takes the position that certain architectural modes of design are possible only within certain worldviews. He establishes a history of the column type that appeared in France that combined the post and beam articulation of Greek temples with the slenderness of Gothic cathedral structure. The column's articulation was that of a series of objects - ie. a post that held up a beam - rather than a monolithic, synthetic / solid articulation like the Romanesque style, and that in order to achieve the unprecedented scale and slenderness of the columns (which was made even more difficult now that the beams were of stone instead of wood) required engineered iron and bars be inserted into the construction.
The articulation of the pieces, Picon says, was related to new modes of analytic thought. Engineering and Architecture at that time were changing from a practice of tradition (based on Classical / Vitruvian models of scale and proportion that made a building work because it was within the ballpark of models that had been refined through trial and error) to one of experiment driven by analysis. Instead of thinking of force flowing as a sort of liquid down piers and walls as had been customary, force had become quantified and, and the building was seen a series of parts that transferred a certain amount of force from one piece to the next. Engineering had become more "scientific" in its practice, and now used experimental methods such as adding rebar to transfer loads to the ground.
What does this have to do with BIM? As opposed to previous generations of 3D modelling programs that I have used, Revit assigns new attributes to geometric objects other than its aesthetic properties. It is an analytic tool, looking to quantify the ways in which a building is performing. It exemplifies a certain worldview - one both experimental and analytic - that by modelling a series of pieces that are given performance attributes one can understand how the finished project will respond.
It's not really groundbreaking to say that a medieval mindset couldn't have come up with BIM, but I think that it is important to note that the particular way in which it works reflects a social reality. Broadly within society we value performance, predictability and experimentation, and have historically - as well as currently - used analysis and modelling in their pursui. Interestingly, these values are exactly those typically touted as the strengths of the BIM system, whether that be within the spheres of environmentalism (through energy efficient design), real estate (via cost and aesthetic simulations, and collision and sequencing analysis) or through the execution of complex "high art" architectures (as a tool for both creating and managing complexity).
At the very least BIM and its meteorically fast adoption across the industry points towards a cultural preference for performance, predictability and experimentation, but it can also be claimed that it will propogate them. Through a system of micro-efficiencies, Revit encourages designers to consider performance and constructivity issues during the design phases. By being good at and simplifying the collection of performance data, it encourages design that emphasizes these characteristics. It doesn't make it impossible to design without regarding them; but it doesn't have to. Life and evolution work through the creation of tendencies by encouragement and small advantages. It is the equivalent of a government encouraging a certain kind of investment or business patterns by offering tax breaks; the market follows the small advantages.
It's not necessarily bad that architects will focus more on these issues; in fact it is something that I think is very exciting and a welcome development. But one can never do everything at the same time, so some things will be left out in place.
As well, these values all have political alliances that I will take a look at in a future post.
