B23H TRABAJO DEL METAL POR ACCION DE UNA ALTA CONCENTRACION DE CORRIENTE ELECTRICA, SOBRE LA PIEZA DE TRABAJO UTILIZANDO UN ELECTRODO EN LUGAR DE UNA HERRAMIENTA; UTILIZACION

The widespread a-critical use of CAD, BIM, and any other varieties of digital modeling, and photo renderings, reduces drawings to “dream stuff” totally devoid of any connection with built “solid stuff”; the resulting buildings are “stuff” that is completely lacking the complementary “dream stuff”. These results of digital application and modeling programs can be described as a quasi-abuse of architectural thinking. They are farcical representations that merely give information and show pointless adherence to programs, codes, and prescriptions, or they are pseudo-representations that show faddish renderings.

They are inauspicious graphic occurrences to be translated into buildings. This allegation may seem excessive, given that digital media offer a set of extraor- dinarily easy instruments for producing and delivering images. In reality, their superficial visually completeness vilifies architectural representations by hiding the cognitive problems and realities embodied in the built world behind the pleasing appearance of a pseudo-efficient neatness.

The most pragmatic sides of construction procedures endure conse- quences generated by the negative standard of completeness and neatness because these might hide costly consequences. Digital modeling allows archi- tects to continually repeat their mistakes by presenting drawings that always look neat—which inspires security and conveys an air of authority—even when full of constructive inanity. These drawings can be considered comparable to a word processed text run through a spellchecker. The result is that mistyp- ings and misspellings are completely absent, but, for instance, the mistyping of the sentence “architecture is a cience” has been automatically corrected to “architecture is a cense”, which is no doubt a puzzling and curious idea, but misleading and meaningless if read in context. Another sample is the follow- ing sentence: “as spellcheckers progrades wilt not fined words witch are miss used butt spelled rite so digitalis muddling withy out tricycle revival will lead to knight garish designs!”

CAD and BIM have an effect akin to unskilled photography, which grasps everything, but holds nothing but unfiltered information, sometimes out of focus. These drawings and renderings are what an acute art theoretician, Fed- erico Zuccaro (1542–1609), called “disegno esterno” (external drawing), a sheer graphic configuration without any substantial substratum.7 _{These rep-}

resentations are nothing but shapes circumscribed by lines, devoid of mental and corporeal substances, filled with patterns and tiling. They produce not architecture but what has been called “buildings in drag”.8 _{The architectural}

details designed by using these three-dimensional software programs look two- dimensional and flattened when built, as if the building was still on a computer screen. A shallow architecture of pure exteriority is the dominant presence in strip malls, builder tract housing, office parks, and high rises. These buildings look much better on the flat and glossy pages of real estate brochures than in the reality of a world-making.

Let us consider the sets of images brought into being by BIM, a new approach of “Virtual Building Constuction” based on parametric CAD technol- ogy. Plans and cross sections, axonometric projections, and perspectives, appear similar to the drawings generated by several of the two and three dimensional modeling software products in widespread use both in practice and academia, and one might erroneously conclude that BIM is simply a more refined, and more robust, version of those other programs. However, the ground break- ing characteristic of BIM software is that it organizes the information describ- ing a building in a series of databases that may be used in a variety of ways: information in the databases includes properties related to materials, construc- tion assemblies, structural and thermal performance, energy use, day-lighting, and a multitude of other attributes. Thus, BIM becomes a powerful means for coordination and collaboration, for testing and analysis, for materials selec- tion, cost estimates, scheduling, structural and environmental analysis, energy

62 Nullo die sine linea performance monitoring, the development and management of furniture and equipment schedules and deliveries, prototype design, digital fabrication, and post-occupancy facility management and maintenance. With the use of BIM, architects can create 3D, 4D and 5D models that show every little detail of buildings, but not of architecture. The relevance and importance of BIM is not only for 3D modeling, but also for 4D and 5D modeling which include schedul- ing and cost projection.9

In the traditional processes, architecture is translated from a material con- dition (drawing) to another material condition (building). Drawings are trans- lated in buildings. With BIM, as in the other similar programs, a conversion takes place. Conversion is an event that results in a transformation of a building information (an algorithm) from the status in which it has been created (presen- tation, production drawings, and so on) to the status of building management (fabrication, cost estimates, maintenance, repairs, etc.). Conversion is justified as the elimination of unnecessary barriers in sharing and exchanging build- ing data between computer applications. The aim is a continuous information flow though the processes of product development eliminating the need of human translation. BIM is a set of systems that enables users to integrate and re-use building information and domain knowledge through the lifecycle of a building.

To deal with such a powerful program or similar ones, the solution is to use them in an inappropriate way. Typically the programs use three-dimen- sional, real-time, dynamic building modeling software to increase productivity

6.3

in building design and construction. They encompass the characteristics of building geometry, spatial relationships, illumination analysis, geographic infor- mation, quantities, qualities and properties of building components. Of these characteristics, building geometry and the quality of building components are the ones to be tackled in an improper way.

James Vandezande, Associate CAD Manager at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, says that the senior members of the design teams with less computer experience, but greater knowledge of design and constructability, seem to fare better with these tools than some of the younger designers because with BIM it is no longer necessary to know how to plot styles and layers, null blocks and empty text. Instead it is necessary to speak of walls and stairs, foundations and framing.10

The solution to BIM predetermined imposition is to use it improperly. To use it improperly, it is necessary to add a few other objects, i.e. scale figures. In Virtual Building, a door is not only a collection of points, lines, and curves arranged to look like a door—it is an object, with an object-oriented infrastruc- ture, that displays many of the qualities and behaviors of a real door within the context of the building information model and it can be used only as door. In improper drawings, scale figures are not profiles but objects that model the animation of human movement. They are embodied agents, virtual humans, and their applications involve behavior-based animation of human movement especially for gesture, gait, and body expression, constructing a parameter- ized action representation for real-time simulation and animation. Then in this

6.4

BIM: the Wheel of Fortune, Lady Architecture is Turning the Wheel of Building Management, Engineering, Detailing, Fabrication and Controlling Institution

64 Nullo die sine linea improper use—contaminated by human behavior—a door, as every architec- tural student knows, can be used as an inexpensive drafting table.

There are many applications for computer animation and simulation to model virtual crowds of autonomous agents. Most of them deal with simula- tions of entertainment, training, and human factors in the analysis for building evacuation. Others deal with scenarios where masses of people gather, flow, and disperse, such as transportation centers, sporting events, and concerts. However, crowd simulations include only basic locomotive behaviors possibly coupled with a few stochastic actions, but to solve the conceiving phase of BIM these simulations should present virtual humans going about their individual and personal agendas of work, play, leisure, travel, or entertainment.11

Take the pantograph you have built in a previous exercise and alter the ratio of connection of its arms and enlarge a drawing of a plan and a section that you are studying. The result of this improper use of the pantograph will be amazing. Then draw within this enlarged section scale figures performing mundane activities.