The Second Studio (formerly The Midnight Charette) is an explicit podcast about design, architecture, and the everyday. Hosted by Architects David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, it features different creative professionals in unscripted conversations that allow for thoughtful takes and personal discussions.
A variety of subjects are covered with honesty and humor: some episodes are interviews, while others are tips for fellow designers, reviews of buildings and other projects, or casual explorations of everyday life and design. The Second Studio is also available on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.
This week David and Marina of FAME Architects respond to a listener who feels that BIM has its benefits for complex work but might also be ruining the industry. The two provide an introduction to BIM, the limitations of its benefits, understanding BIM as a tool, designing in a BIM software, and BIM’s impact on an office and the profession as a whole.
Highlights & Timestamps
An introduction to BIM (Building Information Model); the benefits of BIM for architects and for the industry; and the 7 dimensions of BIM. (00:00)
The idea behind him is to take all of the information that exists within a real-life building—the material, costs, how it gets assembled, the HVAC, all of that—gets put into a digital model. It is very information-centric. […] [Another idea also] is to simplify having to do the same work in 2D or 3D. If you draw a plan in 2D, then try to build the model you’re going to have to extrude that plan up, and, in some ways, you’re repeating some of the tasks and doing the work twice. The idea with using BIM is you draw it once and it builds in 2D and 3D so you don’t have to go back. (03:30)
In an ideal world the same BIM model exists not only within the architecture office where everyone is working from one centralized model but that model is being worked or accessed by all of the project consultants: the engineer, contractor, and mechanical engineer. Like a real building, you are seeing, in digital space, exactly what’s going to be built and you can detect clashes. For example, when you have an HVAC duct hitting a wall or a beam, you know in advance because the BIM model is much more robust as opposed to working only in 2D Autocad, in which case you’re relying more on the brain power of the architect to be aware of these clash issues. (05:26)
The limitations of the benefits of BIM. (08:21)
A lot of the benefits that are talked about with BIM, have to do with, essentially, efficiency. It all comes back to efficiency and relying on a greater amount of information that is put into one place, so you can be efficient about x, y, or z things. […] If you type into Google, “What are the benefits of BIM.” You get a lot of this generic verbiage like, “It produces better buildings.” It produces better buildings from a numerical standpoint, but a better building from a designer’s viewpoint means more than building cost-effectively and using fewer resources. (08:21)
The challenge of designing in BIM. (12:30)
BIM is not the place where you’re to experiment and test things out. When you go into BIM you have to make decisions very early on about whatever wall you’re using, or whatever window type you’re using. You’re picking the specifications of the project when a few decades back those questions would typically come after you already had a general idea of what the building would be like. (12:30)
Let’s say you’re sketching something by hand or you’re working in Rhino and you’re creating a massing. In that case, you’re mentally assigning the specific materials and characteristics in your imagination as you see fit. There’s a gap between what you’re creating and what you’re seeing in your mind. This allows you to project, imagine, and be flexible in your thinking. What happens in BIM software is the inverse and you have to choose if you’re going to use a ‘wall tool’, a ‘roof tool’, a ‘slab tool’, or a column. Most of the time when you’re drawing by hand…yeah you’re drawing walls and slabs but it’s still very loose and you haven’t assigned a specific term or understanding to these things. A wall can be anything. When does a wall become a roof or a floor? When is a wall no longer a wall but a thick inhabitable poché space? A lot of that freedom disappears if you’re not careful when you’re working in BIM. Because in BIM it’s just a predefined wall. (15:25)
If an office is] not super proficient in BIM, their design decisions are going to be made based on how they know to use the software. Which means that their design is not really going to be there’s. Instead, it’s going to be what they can do with the software and that’s where it gets into a tricky situation. It’s no longer architecture authored by the architect. It’s architecture authored somehow by the program. (19:45)
When BIM should be used in a project process. (20:44)
Understanding BIM as a tool. (24:45)
It’s about having a tool that you’re very good at, yes. But the simpler and easier to learn the tool can be, and the more flexible it can be, the better because it allows you to be more imaginative. When the tool is really complicated with menus, drop-downs, pop-ups, and all of these crevices—when tools get hairy—it limits you’re thinking. Ye,s it’s true that if you’re an expert with the tool and you have the dexterity to use it in whatever way, then this is partially addressed but again drawing with a pencil versus in Revit is a massive spread of complexity. Some tools are not meant to be used with the free-thinking mindset. (25:22)
BIM’s impact on project phases and why it might not be practical for small practices. (27:35)
Should students learn Revit? (31:15)
To the teachers who say, “You have to learn Revit because all of the offices use Revit”: Have you ever opened a computer and used SketchUp let alone Revit? No? Well then shut up because you don’t know what you’re talking about. Revit is so unbelievably complicated. You put that on a third-year undergraduate student you’ve condemned them to not learning design. It bothers me when we people start professing, ‘Do this, do that to get hired.” But have you used these tools? No you haven’t. So what would you know about what it’s like to learn design through these tools? You don’t know. (31:15)
Does BIM lead to poor architecture? Architecture compared to cooking. (34:40)
BIM in offices. (41:15)
I don’t care what program the building was in. At the end of the day it’s what the building looks like and the quality of the architect. That’s what’s most important. The efficiency, yes, that’s great for the client, for money, for catching mistakes, but the outcome and goals should always be to produce good architecture in the sense that’s good quality. (47:38)
When you introduce these complex tools into an office, it’ll completely change the dynamic of an office easily and potentially even the quality of the work that the office is producing at the ground level of the employees who are actually doing the work. It’ll completely shift things overnight. We’re still at the phase where a lot of the partners are from a generation where they didn’t use computers at all during school so there’s this disconnect between the tools that all of the people in the office are using and the partners. (50:45)
How will BIM impact the profession of architecture? (52:51)
There is a generation of architects who are becoming more like technicians out of necessity. They have to learn these tools to be hired, they have to use them in the office because it’s expected of them or because the office can’t afford a BIM manager. And these people they’re 25-30. What does that do to someone who goes on to have their own practice? […] It would almost be good for partners to give a shot at designing in BIM or watch it in real-time to realize more viscerally, “Oh. Now, this is the process now in my office. Do I like this? Do I want the people I’m grooming to take over to have to work with this tool? Do I like this idea? (54:10)
