Transformability of Existing Buildings: An Approach based on BIM Technologies: Fid-Bau Portal

Transformability of Existing Buildings: An Approach based on BIM Technologies

Donato, Vincenzo

Working on an existing building represents a complex design challenge that stimulates the development of new design approaches. Especially in the context of historical buildings redesign, it is possible to detect some “invariants”: in an historical layout, in fact, it is possible to “read” precise traces and specific rules of aggregation that does not vary across homogenous categories of building typology. Throughout a transformation, the building will maintain its native function or change it radically, keep the original distributive path or bring an alternative layout, preserve the existing structure or acquire new additional elements. In any case, the final result must balance respect for historical constraints alongside the creative process, whilst avoiding the violation of the principles of sustainable design. From this perspective comes the idea to study the potential and the limitations of the use of modern IT tools in the context of re-designing existing buildings. One possible approach is suggested by “Building Information Modeling”, which is becoming a new paradigm for the entire architectural, engineering and construction industries. Although an in-depth review of the literature shows a variety of design methods for new construction, the existing methods and tools for dealing with existing buildings are limited. BIM may be partially adopted in the context of an automated procedure of assessment: the existing building can be parameterized and then physically and mathematically analysed. This work proposes a method that integrates Graph Theory with the evaluative process, with particular reference to the circulation aspect within a distribution layout. Using a custom tool that can extract data from a BIM model (rooms and connections) and create a graph from this information, it was possible to measure parameters and define a minimum performance usage as a criterion to compare several design solutions.