Tapping into the future of BIM & CIM - Reflecting Real World Usage Situation to Bridge the Interaction Between Plans and Realities
Yasushi Ikeda, Professor, Graduate School of Media and Governance,
Keio University
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| Vol. 7 Tapping into the future of BIM & CIM - Reflecting Real World Usage Situation to Bridge the Interaction Between Plans and Realities |
Yasushi Ikeda, Professor, Graduate School of Media and Governance, |
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| Research on the Leveraging of ICT in Education, Reserach, and Practice in Architecture and Urban Design Professor Ikeda has always been highly interested in computer works since his student era, independent of his current expertise. It is this interest in computing technologies that led him to wonder "what will happen if new ICT technologies such as computers ever become an integral part of designs and researches? What if an entire city is built around these new ICT technologies?" that shaped him into his expertise today. Professor Ikeda specializes in the research and education of environmental and urban designs through IT technologies. He puts especial focus on the topics of "computational designs" and "architectural-informatics", which are disciplinary fields that aims to solve design or complicated architectural problems through ICT. "Thus," the professor comments, "it is never about something shallow like 'incorporating BIM', but rather thinking more openly about 'how computers can help society solve problems through intelligent designs'" in order to truly understand the meaning of BIM.
Professor Ikeda and Architect Designer Akiko Kokubun have also jointly founded and represented a architectural firm named IKDS, participating in numerous practical building designs. By carefully examining and coping with customer demands, it also serves as the test ground for leveraging ICT in practical designs. IKDS was formed in 1995 and has successfully planned, designed, managed numerous construction and building regional or urban projects, by providing consulting, infographics planning, etc. Its activities are not limited to Japan and has successfully expanded into foreign countries such as China, largely thanks to IKDS's use of 3D modeling as a form of communication tool, which effectively crosses the boundary between culture and language to make collaborative projects seem easy. Founding of VDWC and Design Support in FORUM8's Employee Dormitory In response to the increased attention on BIM and CIM, FORUM8 started the VDWC student contest in 2011. This is an international competition that recruits students across the globe to use 3D and VR technolgies to find ways of designing an advanced urban environment. All contestants are provided with FORUM8 products to plan, design, and simulate their proposals, and judgment criteria is based on the combined elements of aesthetics, future outlook, originality, and practicality. Professor Ikeda has long been the Chief of Executive Committee of VDWC. Professor Ikeda envisioned the following goals in his position to devote to the VDWC: 1) changing the current impression that BIM or CIM is adopted as a means of increasing efficiency - he wishes to facilitate the use of BIM and CIM by students, who hold the key to humanity's future in giving birth to innovative ideas, 2) to use 3D informatics provided by BIM to help picturing and communicating between different design proposals, and 3) to foster for the possiblity of international collaboration between students of different cultural background. The 5th VDWC held this year's theme is "The Redevelopment of the Keelung Station in Taiwan" - the first time the theme gets taken outside of Japan. Professor Ikeda stated that he wishes to see students being able to design ideas that can work outside of the national boundaries, which was successfully reflected in the entry status of the competition. In addition, Professor Ikeda has also aided in the design of the ongoing project of FORUM8's employee dormitory. He has provided with us many important design criteria and considerations through simulations via our information modeling software. The professor is dedicated to creating a company that contribute to the bettering of society, and he believes that communication via computing tools to be the key towards his goals. He was also an advocate of the idea of using FORUM8's VR-Cloud to put potential residents of the building into a virtual environment, and provide them with the freedom to post comments on any location to provide their feedbacks. The dormitory was a testbed of this solution and in the futre, he dreams of a project that is much larger in scale in the near future. Two Important Merits to CIM "The more people involved, especially for public projects, building consensus is paramount" - although this view is true and sound, the simple fact is that not all are backed by adequate knowledge to read the expert drawings, the cognitive training to turn 2D documents into 3D settings, nor the experience to assume whether something is technically feasible. "Therefore, it is common for most of us to just think 'let's leave it to the experts'". It is up to CIM as a tool to partially, if not entirelly, help us break away from this thinking pattern or cognitive restrictions. Summing this up, after a virtual CIM tour of the project, even without viewing the original drawings, one at least gets the grasp of what the finished product will look like, as well as performing simulations to visualize the unseenable elements, such as lighting, noise, or cost. It is also technically possible to hold online commenting, chatting, or voting sessions for those users who have experienced the project virtually. This can help reveal and spread the data or elements that otherwise could only be understood by expert. "I have long before dreamt of the idea of linking BIM with the internet to aid in information sharing and decision making. The 'Cloud Design - Review' system is one such approach to it" said Professor Ikeda. On the other hand, the term BIM currently has the impression of dedicated professional designers making 3D models of its design works. In contrast, CIM takes into consideration of not only the objects involving the project to be built, but also existing elements, such as the shape of the terrain, existing road designs, flow of the neighbourhood residents, or even projects to be finished by the government or other companies. In other words, CIM is also about the digitalization of objects beyond the data designed in the current project. With this in mind, interaction between what is to be created through the proposed project, and what already exists, is finally formed. The idea of CIM is this connection between plans and realities, which can be used for a broder evaluation of various scenarios. "BIM can also incorporate and benefit from the exact same thinking in future software features," said Professor Ikeda. He further gave the example idea of a building rennovation case, where he comments on the possibility of modeling existing electrical wirings and how new outlets or new wirings can be reasonably designed, as an example to represent how CIM's ideas can be reused in BIM to form new design considerations and innovations. New Trends Surrounding BIM/CIM The recent trend of IoT (internet of things) has also starting to affect BIM and CIM. Originally only the 3D shape data of the project is ever visualized, but now, numerous real world data and parameters can be measured and integrated into the same BIM or CIM settings, and we are seeing increasing amount of examples in this direction. This ia can be viewed as a form of improved human computer interaction, as was commented by Profesor Ikeda. Instead of thinking only of the data to be planned, we now have a platform to integrate many other real world elements and data to consider. Professor Ikeda and his colleagues are currently researching on advanced environmental control and energy management methods to build reduce environmental burdens while maintaining a healthy and comfortable environment. A testbed for their reserach work, the "Koebo-House", is located within the Keio SFC Campus. Here, Professor Ikeda examines the effectiveness of "smarthouse" concept through an integrated BIM approach. This is in-line with how BIM/CIM follow chronologicak order of the events that may happen, and how people may use or react the facility, under one single platform. "On this basis," the Professor stated, "it becomes more and more obvious that one person or one company cannot possibly solve all the technical problems alone, as more elements and innovative uses become integrated into BIM and CIM to reveal more and more design considerations." He further stresses that "BIM's applications can be omnipurpose, but being omnipurpose is not the goal for most people." In this sense, he highly praises FORUM8's flexible products and solution services that can adapt to various customer needs. "The most interesting thing about BIM and CIM is that it is not the software as it is that matters, but understanding it as a platform for improving communication across any group of people, and the freedom to think 'it will be fun and more effective if we can picture this'."
(By : Takashi Ikeno.) (Translated by: FORUM8 Co., Ltd.) |
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