Building Information Modeling Tools: Opportunities for Early Stages of Architectural Design

Abstract

In the practice of building design, numerous researchers point out that, at the early stages of architectural design, many significant decisions are taken to directly affect functional qualities, the performance of the building, aesthetics, and the relationship of the building with the natural environment and climate, even if there is no certain and valid information to create and obtain satisfying design. In this paper, I particularly focus on the early stages of architectural design and search for the opportunities provided by Building Information Modeling (BIM) tools, towards the concept of performance analysis and aesthetic variations. Study also includes case study implementations which visualize the early processes of architectural design with benefits of BIM under different conditions to evaluate its opportunities during these design processes. To clarify and to test the benefits of BIM tools, the task is done to create a concept model with Vasari and Revit software. Participants are asked for designing alternatives within the given requirements and synchronically, I analyzed the process within the perspective of how design products are shaped and also how the process effects the designers while they are designing. Later on, I observe how participants use the tool to obtain aesthetic variations and how tool provides a connection between aesthetic issues and the performance realities. At this stage, BIM tools provide an evaluation platform to crosscheck the current design alternatives with the selected building components and environmental conditions such as temperature, sun light directions, wind directions, and so on. By this way, designers are able to realize the relationship between the design product and the environment and also be able to obtain performance analysis of the alternatives on the very early stages of architectural design. As a result of these case studies, I observe that the BIM tools (Vasari and Revit) which are used in this study, do not provide an automated design process, but only analyze the designer’s existing design to enable the evaluation of the relationship between the building and the environment. Then, the design relies on both the functional realities and the subjective judgements of designer. This operation continues as an iterative process until designer feels satisfied for his/her design product. As a summary, early stages of the architectural design are accepted as the weakest point of the BIM systems. In this study, two case studies have been implemented to reveal how BIM can help to designers in these stages. As a result of the implementations, it is understood that BIM is a powerful early stages of architectural design tool, not for designing but for design supporting.