HERITAGE BUILDING INFORMATION MODELLING FOR CONSERVATION OF 20TH CENTURY MODERNIST ARCHITECTURE

Abstract

Heritage building conservation planning is values-based, interdisciplinary process that requires effective means to capture, represent, and visualize relevant building information. The information-intense nature of this process requires a modelling environment that can maintain heritage building information that is highly heterogeneous, fragmented and unstructured. This paper presents the development of a custom-made Heritage Building Information Model (HBIM) of the Middle East Technical University Faculty of Architecture building, a 20th-century Modernist structure. The modelling efforts were part of a research project supported by the Getty Foundation, Keeping It Modern Grant, which aimed at the development of a conservation plan for this unique building. A wide variety of technologies regarding data acquisition, representation, visualization and integration were used during modelling. In the process of model construction, the existing model schema is extended using a topdown approach for the representation of gathered data. We discuss the use of the relevant technologies, HBIM’s capacity in representing assessment information, different modes of visualization that HBIM facilitates, and possibilities of data integration between HBIM and auxiliary tools for building performance evaluation. In the end what is assessed, is the HBIM’s potential to be continuously used to update, access, and visualize as-is building information for heritage buildings.