False Proxies

From “Architecture and the Anthropocene,” Taught by Neyran Turan

The popularization of building information modeling, or BIM, has relocated the architect’s everyday labor from the drafting table and construction site to the keyboard and monitor. Although design now exists almost exclusively within software, digital modeling still has its physical effects. As Amelyn Ng discusses in “7D Vision,” BIM has become “a new locus of power and prophecy…How that power is enacted becomes just as much a question of politics as it is of visuality.”[1] Digital design has direct correlation with very physical construction supply chains, hiring processes and building maintenance.

Revit, one of the most popular BIM programs, is marketed on Autodesk’s website as “coordinated, consistent, and complete,”[2] portraying the software’s intended efficiency and accuracy. Despite its efforts to reduce errors, the software is not exempt from misuse or flaws. Glitches caused by software and mistakes made by users seem to exist solely inside of a desktop screen—however, these errors have physical repercussions and material impact beyond the BIM-scape.

Software Misuse

Certain digital mistakes are caused by the BIM interface and lack of technical knowledge by the user. Although BIM has become standard, especially in larger practices whose names are made up of three initials, proficiency is typically required before being hired as an architect or architectural intern. Training therefore occurs without pay and to the subjective level of proficiency of the individual. A line on a resume claiming BIM expertise does not preclude errors.

Common mistakes like topography running through the sub-levels of a building or a set of stairs that lead to nowhere may be easily caught before they leave the hands of the architect. Even if those mistakes do get handed over to the contractor, they are likely loud and objective enough to warrant a request for information. However, certain more nuanced and less visible errors may slip through the cracks.

Revit’s interface makes it easy to mistake the inside of a wall with its outside, for example. An inside-out wall in a floor plan presents subjectivity. Is the builder to assume architectural intent? Or maybe instead the builder decides an inside-out wall is too outrageous and decides to invert the wall. The builder’s agency continues—is the wall’s centerline maintained? Do they decide to keep the finish face in the original place, mirroring the glitched wall on its edge?

Erin Besler’s installation at The MAK Center for Art and Architecture in LA, “The Entire Situation,” constructs with the subjectivities of common digital mistakes. The project takes material thickness as an architectural problem to be designed with rather than against. The architecture exists in the overlap between various forms of expertise, inhabiting the everyday labors of both construction and building information modeling. Besler writes, “Rather than smooth over the digital aberrations that are produced, mainly at the intersection of surfaces, The Entire Situation locates these moments as sites for design.” How might architects communicate to builders that our mistakes, in this instance, are intentional? The project explores problems brought into design by “product samples, industry catalogs, material libraries, building information modeling, and fabrication” in order to study how these problems materialize conceptually. Besler capitalized on the differences between softwares and hardwares in order to allow for some friction between BIM, product, designer and builder.[3]

Fake Commodities

Another site of common error within the digital interface is the 3D BIM object. Stand-ins for commodities, BIM objects come free from manufacturers’ websites or online BIM libraries. These free things representing monetary things come at no cost other than mandatory account signups and weekly emails in your inbox.

Once downloaded, BIM objects are imported into a Revit file and are ready to be placed as components. Familiar with the common glitches that occur when importing a new component, I downloaded twelve BIM urinals from Kohler, Toto, the National BIM Library, BIMobject and RevitCity. Upon importing the twelve urinals into a fresh Revit file with just a couple of walls to act as hosts, I was relieved to run into three glitches that as an architectural intern, would have warranted a ‘Sync to Central’[4] and a closed laptop. One urinal was unable to load at all. Two came in without a parameter for hosting, allowing them to float in the center of the room. Finally, the “Urinal-Kohler-Freshman-4989-R-Vitreous_China-0-White” by Kohler, downloaded from BIMobject’s website, came in upside-down.

Kohler’s website displays the urinal hanging right-side-up, indicating this is no purposeful play off of a Duchamp.[6] None of the objects when downloaded were displayed floating in the middle of a room. So what are the implications of these false proxies? Does the free object devalue the monetary object? Surely a BIM object with higher fidelity to its respective commodity saves all actors involved in design and construction time, and therefore money. BIM object glitches serve to disrupt supply chains, potentially resulting in certain suppliers getting more business than others based solely on the performance of their free digital stand-in products.

Digital Paperwork

With BIM objects come embedded parameters from the manufacturer or BIM library. Within the Revit interface, these parameters automatically fill schedules: window, door, finish, appliance, electrical, plumbing, etc. Often BIM objects are imported with missing parameter entries, such as color, manufacturer, price, material or model name. Missing, incorrect or outdated object parameters can cause mistakes in material schedules, causing potentially adverse effects on the construction process.

BIM object parameters have also begun to incorporate sub-components and material structures that occupy Revit’s automated material takeoff schedules. Materials are quantified by area and volume, having direct implication on how much of each material is purchased. However this automation depends on the accuracy of the manufacturer in inputting data and the diligence of the designer in digitally modeling.

There are again direct correlations between the proximity, or lack thereof, of a digital component to its physical counterpart and construction supply chains. Glitched digital paperwork can lead to delays, material shortages or surplus, or incorrect product orders. Nonexistent paint colors, miscalculated square footages and pricing typos affect not only the time it takes to complete a project, but the decisions architects and builders make about which products to buy or problem-solving material shortages.

The Productive Glitch

A lack of fidelity between digital and intended reality due to software glitches, improper use or misbehaving BIM objects may serve to accidentally disrupt the flow of capital and power dynamics of labor. Mistakes that give agency to builders form de facto collectives between supplier, architect and contractor.

Beyond accidents, mistakes could be utilized as a form of intentional resistance by activist interns, architects, builders or suppliers. In “Climate Action by Software?”, Amelyn Ng questions “What tactics might the subversive BIM worker employ? Mislabeling all fossil fuel-related object file structures, for example, could disorient the high-carbon BIM library. Beyond ‘users,’ digitally dissenting designers could dislodge environmentally or socially troubling projects from their screens.”

The seemingly endless catalog of BIM objects extends well beyond the innocence of metal stud walls, molding and urinals. In online BIM libraries, one can find cement silos, barbed wire fences, prison gates, security cameras and police cars—intended substitutions for objects of oppression and extraction. Intentional or accidental gaps between these digital proxies and their respective physical commodities could render mistakes productive.

Glitches and mistakes in ordinary, digital tasks are an opportunity for technology to serve to resist, beyond its typical image of constant progress and innovation. A misuse, strategic or otherwise, of everyday softwares may act in disrupting power dynamics in labor, irritating capital and interfering in material supply chains. Rather than inadequacies, representational falsities may be considered productive in their deceit and misbehavior.

[1] Amelyn Ng, “7D Vision.”

[2] Autodesk, “Revit Software Overview.”

[3] Besler & Sons, “The Entire Situation.”

[4] Revit’s ‘Sync to Central’ function allows several designers to work in a model at once, intermittently saving to a central model. More glitches often surround this process, for example when two people attempt to sync to central at once, or when two people edit the same components of the model before syncing to the central model.

[5] This Revit screenshot is taken in the software’s ‘Realistic’ view, displaying the closest the BIM object is able to represent its physical counterpart.

[6] Duchamp’s “Fountain” can be seen in parallel to the BIM object as a readymade, subverted into malfunction and in turn misrepresenting the represented.