BIM-Agile Practices Experiments in Architectural Design: Elicitation of Architectural Intentions and Refinement of Design Tasks

Abstract

The digital transition is changing the way architectural firms are making design. The BIM technology, which tends to become mandatory for legal and competitive reasons is both convincing because of its parametric and global modeling sides and frightening because of changes caused by the arrival of new digital tools. Indeed, our basic postulate is that the emergence of new digital tools must necessarily be followed by the emergence of new practices and new project management in design stage. This research focuses on innovative project management methods and collaborative practices allowing to facilitate the integration of new digital tools in order to create innovative practices and methods adapted to computer-assisted and collaborative architectural design. We take inspiration from agile methods and practices born in the software engineering world in the 1990s. Agile methods are innovative project management methods that focus mainly on a better reactivity. We have thus identified that a better reactivity is corroborated to a better collaboration around the understanding and repartition of design tasks. Thus, we focus in particular in this paper on elicitation of architectural intentions and refinement of design tasks in collaborative groups of students working on a BIM project. For this purpose, we have set up a collaborative matrix that students fill up by explaining together their architectural wills and intentions for this project exercise. Naturally follows a defining “tasks to be done” process, which we will detail in this paper.