Questioning the Role of BIM in Architectural Education

Changes in the profession of architecture inevitably place pressure on architectural education. One would think it is a straightforward supply and demand system—skills should be taught in school to meet the needs of the profession. Yet the maturing process for architects is slow, expertise is hard-earned, and it is not always obvious how "input" in school will result in "output" many years later. It is far more appropriate to consider architectural education as the beginning of a life-long process of inquiry rather than as a direct input/output mechanism. It is acknowledged that education must meet the needs of the profession. But education's most important role is to shape the trajectory of exploration after graduation, thus contributing to the future of the profession.

Software that allows for the three dimensional construction of a virtual building (Building Information Modeling or BIM), will increasingly influence project delivery and the interactions between architects and other stakeholders. BIM plus the new way of working it engenders, generally known as "Integrated Practice," will necessitate changes in education, but the exact nature of the shift is unclear. With the increased attention on BIM software and its increased availability to students, we are likely to see BIM permeate (if not dominate) the studios within the next few years. However, careful attention must be paid to the impact of this particular tool on the curriculum. We must ask: what role should BIM have in architectural education and where is its appropriate place in the curriculum? What would an "Integrative Education" look like—a curriculum intended to prepare students for Integrated Practice?

The reformulation of the curriculum outlined here focuses heavily on the areas most affected by BIM: representation, design, construction and practice. In order to evaluate any model for future architectural curricula, one must first understand the changing professional context of representation tools and have an understanding of current and past curricular structures.

BIM Aptitude

All representation tools—digital or analog—affect the design process, and leave their mark on the built form. The potential effect of BIM on the design process is unprecedented, and the ease in which it can translate directly into built form can equally be viewed as exciting or alarming.

Never has a representation tool been so demanding of its user. The competent BIM operator must have an understanding of the tool, knowledge of materials and construction methods, and appreciation for professional practice. However, to move from "competence" to "excellence," I would add to this list perhaps the most important aptitude—critical thinking: the ability to simultaneously envision multiple aspects of a problem and their relationships before proceeding toward a solution. In contrast to the other qualifications listed above, this particular ability must be developed before entering practice as is best honed during an academic architectural education.

The Nature of Architectural Curricula

Looking at seminal curricular models across the history of post-17th century architectural education, one can track the varying degrees of emphasis placed on skills related to the representation of design ideas (formal composition studied through drawing, rendering, and modeling), as opposed to those related to the understanding of the actual making of a building (technical issues including structure, construction, and thermal control). Additionally, timing in the curriculum is critical. Formal and technical knowledge can be on more or less parallel tracks or one introduced before the other. Integrative education is incredibly demanding of both content and timing—requiring construction, practice and formal knowledge, all beginning early and reaching a high level.

A key element missing in the discussion so far is "critical or design thinking." Successful curricula in the past found ways to provide this training while responding to their particular historical, social and professional contexts. The careless introduction of BIM with all of its prerequisite skills to a curriculum could overwhelm the subtleties inherent in nurturing design thinking, displacing it from its central role in the architectural curriculum.

Viewed skeptically, one could say that the Integrated Practice curriculum is impossibly taxing, placing demands on students that can simply not be met. Many educators worry that design thinking will be jettisoned to make room for new content. Not only is there competition for students' time, but there are two competing philosophies: BIM is inherently answer-driven, design thinking is question-driven. The fear is that heavy emphasis on "how to" guarantees a loss of the critical "why."

While the curriculum needs to be protected against this threat, in other ways, BIM provides a refreshing shift. The most positive effect of BIM on the curriculum will be the de-emphasis on formal manipulation. This change could cause architectural education to take on a far more relevant role in the world—dealing with richer and more substantive issues than aesthetics alone.

Trajectory

If form-centric curricula have become outmoded or self-indulgent, and a BIM-centric construction/practice agenda threatens to expropriate time needed to train design thinking, is there room for a new trajectory? Individual schools must answer this for themselves, but this essay will focus attention on two main categories of issues: those that deal with the nature of BIM as a representation tool, and those that respond to the professional expertise demanded by its use in Integrated Practice.

1. Slowing Down BIM

Students should know what drives their tools. Understanding the inner workings of BIM can be accomplished by choosing software that encourages the user to tinker with parametric codes (such as Generative Components or Digital Project). However, these programs have notoriously steep learning curves, even for digitally facile designers. A more appropriate way to teach these lessons in school might paradoxically come from low-tech, traditional analog processes: descriptive geometry, physical models and rigorous design editing.

Descriptive geometry requires students to grapple with the flatland of the page while constantly keeping three-dimensional geometry in mind. Like the parametric relationship of points in a model's database, points on the page become mentally associated to other points in other views. For instance, the projection of a shadow created by two intersecting forms onto a shaped plane requires the translation of one point through several geometric operations. The visual/spatial understanding of these intertwined relationships lays the groundwork for understanding (and exploiting) parametric linkages that go beyond geometry.

Building a BIM model has similarities to building a physical model. With models, the manner in which they are constructed matters. A take-apart model whose roof can be removed to reveal a floor plate reads differently than a model of the same building which can be split open to reveal its section. The exercise of physical model building remains a powerful design tool, and can illuminate the process of modeling with BIM.

In addition to mastering geometry and understanding the implications of the way models are constructed, students should develop a rigorous process of establishing associations between elements. Students should understand that elements of the model might be linked, not only because of building conventions, but also for reasons of design intent. For example, construction priorities would dictate that all windows (and perhaps doors) are grouped and can therefore be manipulated (changed, priced, built) as such. However, design priorities might dictate that a specific opening be linked to a specific orientation, or that a room's south-facing windows be linked to a target luminosity in that room. It is important to note that the act of sorting out all of these priorities is a challenge in and of itself. There are two kinds of skills needed: first, the ability to generate options by systematically testing combinations of design factors, and the second, arguably more important habit, is to edit these options using highly developed skills to establish priorities, recognizing that some relationships are more productive than others.

2. Practicing Practice

Professional education is responsible for preparing students to grapple with the challenging issues faced daily in practice: costs, codes, material assembly and collaboration. There are two curricular areas in which BIM seems particularly suited to offer the greatest opportunity: building construction and collaborative practice.

Conventional and logical construction systems are readily available in the default libraries and settings in BIM. As one might expect, the program is only as intelligent as the operator. A door might look credible in the model but have no room for framing, trim, hardware or swing. The appropriate educational context in which to introduce BIM may be a construction systems course, but one in which construction logic is understood rather than copied and the limits of the software are made clear.

Much has been made of Integrated Practice as an opportunity to return the architect to the role of the "master builder," the central position among a diverse team of experts. Architects functioning in this way must be able to listen well, synthesize information from a range of sources, balance a variety of needs and agendas, and elicit the best work out of each contributor, while always advancing the design intentions. Collaboration in its professional sense is hard to simulate in an academic setting. Professional collaboration forms among participants who have clearly defined (and complementary) roles, responsibilities and expertise. Collaborators come to the table with experience and maturity gained over many years of practice.

The informed give and take commonly found in practice can occur in school if conditions are right. Studio conversations that most closely parallel the language and tenor of professional collaboration occur in settings where teams of students are working at full scale. This scenario is most commonly executed as a full semester or year design/build studio but more contained exercises can also be effective.

The suggestions in this section have covered design and representation issues raised by BIM and those building construction and collaborative practices to consider in preparing students for Integrated Practice. The conversation must expand to include critical topics such as history, theory, site/urban design and socio-cultural issues, etc. This essay is intended to serve as the beginning of a dialogue among academics and between academics and professionals—a discourse vitally important to the future of the profession.

Conclusion

The level of expertise required to intelligently design with BIM is significant, and serious consideration must be given to how it can be taught. Looking back, even the most admired architectural curricula never attempted to cover all the skills and knowledge that a mature architect should eventually have. Today, this is even more true given the level of complexity and specialization in the profession—and of course, the new demands of Integrated Practice.

Ideally, time should not be spent on facts or skills that are quickly outdated, but instead focus should be placed on the underlying logic behind those facts and skills. In this way, students learn ways of seeing and thinking that will sustain themselves throughout a long career in an ever-changing profession. In future curricula, core design skills will remain extremely important, yet new demands must be anticipated. The difficulty will be in developing a cogent set of courses and exercises that encourage the habit of asking questions rather than seeking answers.

If BIM is introduced in the curriculum without respecting its considerable liabilities, design thinking will not survive. Now more than ever, this way of thinking and seeing should be valued—it is architects' most sought-after expertise. A year ago, the architect James Cutler claimed, "There's nothing more capable of making my employees stupid than AutoCAD, because they can draw something two-dimensionally and it looks right to them, but they're not seeing three-dimensionally." While it would be hard to fault BIM of this particular shortcoming, one can easily fear a future where BIM has effectively made us too stupid to question the rules and assumptions we are meant to control.

Note: This article is adapted from the author's essay entitled, "Suggestions for an Integrative Education" published in AIA Report on Integrated Practice, Daniel Friedman, ed., 2006.

About the Author

Renée Cheng, AIA, is a graduate of Harvard's GSD and Harvard College. Her professional experience includes work for Pei, Cobb, Freed and Partners and Richard Meier and Partners before founding Cheng-Olson Design. She taught at the University of Michigan and the University of Arizona before joining the faculty of the University of Minnesota in January 2002, where she is currently Head. She has been recognized for teaching excellence with numerous awards. Her research involves documenting case studies of buildings that integrate design with emerging technologies. She has been tracking several large-scale projects by Frank Gehry and Associates as well as smaller scale CAD-CAM and BIM work done by firms such as SHoP Architects, Lazor Office, and KieranTimberlake. She has recently edited a new chapter for Architectural Graphic Standards on Computing Technologies, to be published by Wiley later in 2006. She can be reached at rcheng@umn.edu.

© Renée Cheng.

Note: The views expressed in Viewpoint articles are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect those of AECbytes.