Beyond BIM: Architecture Information Modeling

by Danelle Briscoe

Beyond BIM explores the vast and under-explored design potential undertaken by information modeling. Through a series of investigations grounded in the analysis of built work, interviews with leading practitioners, and speculative projects, the author catalogs the practical advantages and theoretical implications of exploiting BIM as a primary tool for design innovation. Organized by information type, such as geographic data, local code, or materials, each chapter suggests a realm of knowledge that can be harvested and imported into BIM to give meaningful specificity to architectural form and space. While highly sustainable, the work documented and envisioned in this book moves well beyond ‘normalization,’ to reveal inventive takes on contemporary practice. Beyond BIM serves as a primary resource for professional architects from practice, researchers and designers engaged in information related spatial design processes, as well as students and faculties of architecture schools in search of BIM design inspiration. Likewise, those highly attuned to computation and unconventional ways of creating form and space, particularly built outcomes that utilize BIM, will find this book meaningful and essential.

250 pages, Hardcover

First published October 23, 2015

Reviews

[Alexander Van Leadam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Architects are fascinated by the computer but at the same time fearsome of the beast. One of the latest additions to computer-mediated architecture is BIM (Building Information Modelling), hailed by too many as the ultimate solution to problems of cost, time and performance. The author tries to present an architect's viewpoint that goes beyond the boring practicalities of design and construction. Unfortunately (and this might relate to her audience), the book remains superficial and tentative, telling stories of nice buildings and interesting technologies with little coherence or real sense of purpose. It lists indications but offers no proof, like most architectural books that try to combine theory with what prominent or at least well-known architects do. Don't expect to learn much about BIM or other key techniques like parametrization from it. Architectural inspiration, on the other hand, of the kind that any student could use, abounds in its examples.