Building Information Modeling: BIM in Current and Future Practice

The bright future and exciting possibilities of BIM

Many architects and engineers regard BIM as a disruptive force, changing the way building professionals design, build, and ultimately manage a built structure. With its emphasis on continuing advances in BIM research, teaching, and practice, Building Information Modeling: BIM in Current and Future Practice encourages readers to transform disruption to opportunity and challenges them to reconsider their preconceptions about BIM.

Thought leaders from universities and professional practice composed essays exploring BIM's potential to improve the products and processes of architectural design including the structure and content of the tools themselves. These authors provide insights for assessing the current practice and research directions of BIM and speculate about its future. The twenty-six chapters are thematically grouped in six sections that present complementary and sometimes incompatible positions:

• Design Thinking and BIM
• BIM Analytics
• Comprehensive BIM
• Reasoning with BIM
• Professional BIM
• BIM Speculations

Together, these authors provide stimulating ideas regarding new directions in building information modeling.

Karen Kensek, LEED AP BD+C, Assoc. AIA  teaches at the University of Southern California, School of Architecture. She received her SB at MIT and MArch from University of California, Berkeley and. Her research work includes BIM + sustainability, BIM Analytics, virtual reconstruction of ancient places, solar envelopes, and digital design. Previously she taught computer seminars and assisted with computer-aided design studios at the University of California, Berkeley.



She has hosted seven building information modeling (BIM) symposia at USC (2007-2013) with subthemes on education, sustainable design, construction and fabrication, analytical modeling and evidenced-based design, BIM management, and the future of BIM. She has, with the USC School of Architecture, received the Autodesk Revit BIM Experience Award in 2008 and an Honorable Mention from the AIA TAP Group in BIM in 2010. Along with Douglas Noble, she has been designated the recipient of the 2014 ACSA Creative Achievement Award. She is a past president of ACADIA.



Douglas Noble, FAIA, PhD is currently Chair of the Ph.D. program in Architecture and Discipline Head for Building Science at the University of Southern California where he also teaches in the design studio. He hosts the FACADE TECTONICS conferences in Los Angeles each year and is the editor of the FACADE TECTONICS Journal. He is a licensed architect and the former president of the Association for Computer-Aided Design In Architecture (ACADIA).  He is the co-editor/author (with Karen Kensek) of Mission - Method - Madness: Computer-Supported Design in Architecture and Software for Architects: The Guide to Computer Applications for the Architecture Profession.  He obtained his B.Arch. from Cal Poly Pomona and his M.Arch. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. He received the 2014 ACSA Creative Achievement Award for NotLY - Not Licensed Yet, a program to help architecture interns become architects.