Critique: "Report on Integrated Practice - 5"

A critical caveat must be noted: for architects to exploit the potential of BIM as an iterative design tool, they must be retrained to perceive fluidity in what looks fixed (or at least to resist this perceptual bias).  The turn of the century poet Paul Valery tells us that "seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees", in BIM, it is exceedingly difficult to forget anything.

- Renee Cheng, Report on Integrated Practice, 5

The specificity and data capabilities which make BIM so powerful, are ultimately the devices which hinders the ability to utilize the software as an effective conceptual design tool.  Cheng speaks about the differences between problem-solving and design-thinking; the first which simply seeks answers, while the later explores and questions the possibilities.  Locking-in specifics early in the design process can often limit the potential for forms, voids, elements to be perceived in different capacities.

However, the argument isn't that BIM simply incapable of conceptual design-thinking, but requires the designer to imagine and perceive the model with infinite potential and range beyond the specific parameters the software is documenting.  Collaboration between media is still critical to successful, efficient, and productive thinking, but BIM software can be utilized as so much more than a means for documenting construction.  For BIM to be fully realized for its potential to act as an early design-tool, the architect must adapt to "seeing" again in this new media, recognizing the specifics when they become appropriate.