Sheep to a slaughter

The story of BIM (Building Information Modeling) was always there. Since humans moved into caves. One needs to take an informative decision to move one’s family into a cave.

One tiny bit of this topic in architecture is getting theorized since late 90s and 2000 onward. In fact, there are many theories in there; some even earlier — but the ones coming out of commercial organizations from late 90’s and early part of this century seems to be ruling roost.

The current way of looking at BIM is polluted by conflicting socio-politico-economic decisions that is heavily biased towards current construction practices of a specific kind -- one seen in advanced countries.

A huge point which people miss is that all the BIM software that is in use today other than TAD; the BIM I wrote, is strongly influenced if not direct descend from mech. engineering software. I would love to stand corrected and if anyone can provide counter example on a BIM that arose out of architectural theories I would be really grateful

But in the hubris around BIM this is all glossed over.

It is semantically equivalent of people gleefully standing around a car few decades back, rubbing their palms in excitement as their favorite toy now has the newly invented gadget called a carburetor. Wow, what speed we now have!

Who has time to listen to sane voices who want to all about the history or purpose of cars? Right? Nobody wants to know the bad news about motor accidents and fatalities and petrol wars and pollution, right?

In a very same fashion there is so much excitement and full adherence to the IFC based BIM that nobody really wants to deeply discuss the history of architecture and how ill thought designs can create havoc in the world.

One beautiful sweep of generative geometry and you get a fantastic facade. Who wants to get distracted by the evil that may bring such as the concave facade heating up nearby areas, more air conditioning costs inside. Contribution to global warming… energy crisis…And so on

One would have thought that at least three important questions should be asked in this area of architectural theory:

• What is a building?
• What is information?
• What is really "managing" information?

Walt Whitman wisely said this

“All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it; Did you think it was in the white or gray stone? or the lines of the arches and cornices?”

A building is not the brick n mortar you see in front of you just the way a nice plate of Biryani is not just the soft cooked rice with its embellishments

The Biryani once had hard uncooked rice when it started its life journey. It had water which was boiled off. It had many other actions that was done to it. Heating it for example.

Which comes to the second question. Should we talk about information of only what is there in front of you? What about things which went into the construction and got boiled off, metaphorically?

Third question is also important: when you talk about managing the information, surely you are not talking about enumerating what is there and then and thus live only in the present tense.

Management of a flock of sheep requires the shepherd to actually ensure the flock does not stray, eats at the right meadow and control many other actions. The shepherd is not just merely counting the sheep that is there. He will fall asleep.

That point about a sweeping facade created from generative geometry was not a hyperbole. There are at least two large, expensive projects that screwed up the heat and glare in the neighborhood because of curved glass

We have no access to the processes that architects took when designing. We really have no idea what went behind in the decision making of a building. We have no clue on the processes went into the construction nor have any idea what kind of side effects those processes created.

We are facing a serious mess … and in the word “we”, I include the entire world, including non-architects; for nobody can escape the enveloping womb of architecture.

We are all happy with the benign effort of the excited shepherd counting sheep. We then become sheep to a slaughter

See this article https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2786723/London-skyscraper-Walkie-Talkie-melted-cars-reflecting-sunlight-fitted-shading.html

Those who want to try out a more saner, simpler BIM go to www.teamtad.com TAD is free and I am actively available in the chat system for TAD, to support it. Not some old shepherd!