The Creative Process of Architecture and Building Information Modeling

Building Information Modeling and architecture, more commonly known as BIM is the subject of many discussions in the architectural communities lately. The architectural design is a complex set of transactions where the knowledge of many disciplines meets the professionalism of people involved, however most of the interaction is done on paper-based communication. Building Information Modeling, the subject of this paper, is a design strategy which aspires to be much more than a mere information exchange tool: it is rather a coordinated and holistic approach aimed to assist designer, engineers, developers, decision makers, contractors and owners. A digital model derived from B.I.M. (acronym for Building Information Modeling) software allows, among other features, the integration of the necessary data to all the participants of the project. It maintains and shares up to date information, facilitates the changes of the building components in real time and describes the project in a coherent way. Aggregating the information is the very essence of B.I.M., where sorting and the semantics of the building components are combined into a multidisciplinary interactive archive. The NIBS (National Institute of Building Science) defines B.I.M as a representation of digital physical characteristics and functional properties of an object‖. At the same time B.I.M serves to share resources and information that will accompany the object in its project life cycle. The aim of this paper is to clear some concepts that are often ambiguous and confusing