Il Building Information Modeling, nella sua accezione strumentale, forse differentemente dal Computational Design, implica, più o meno consapevolmente, un approccio «lineare» alla concezione progettuale.
Ciò, tuttavia, stride con l’approccio, di altra natura, che caratterizza la nascita dell’idea, formale e spaziale, che contraddistingue il modo di pensare degli Architetti.
Il dilemma che si pone è, perciò, quello di far convivere un Committente in grado di porre le giuste «domande» e un Gruppo di Progettisti che possano corrispondervi responsabilmente senza, tuttavia, ricadere in un contesto meccanicistico. Escaping, (s)fuggente, allude, perciò, sia alla dimensione della «vaghezza», positiva, dello Schizzo, sia alla «parzialità» di un Progetto Esecutivo.

 A fascinating perspective features the Architectural Design Process: it entails the attempt to fully digitize or digitilize the Creative and Professional Performances to be provided by the Architectural Practices and its own Technical Consultants as well as the Contractors when involved within the Early Contractor’s Involvement Procurement Route.
The main reason why it happens lies with the desire of the Clients/RE Developers and the Financial Institutions to increase the Degree of Monitorability (Business Intelligence) over the Design Process and the Whole Project.
Likewise, the main concern stays with enhancing the effectiveness of the Project itself and its related outcomes in terms of savings and wastes.
Nonetheless, an original hindrance arises within the Briefing Process itself: although the Digital Space Programmes (including Room Data Sheets and FF&E Sheets) seem to allow Intelligent Clients to make the Brief and the Information Requirements fully computable, such an approach appears to be too mechanistic, to be biased by a functionalist mindset.
Consequently, an Intelligent Client Organization, has to be capable to freeze on a computable basis its own Expectactions and Requirements, as well as to define some rule sets in order to perform any Model Checking-Oriented tasks.
Notwithstanding it, the Client might loose any capability of «emotionally» dealing with the preferred and awarded Design Suppliers (Architects and their own Technical Consultants).
On the other hand, the Architects are not rightly available to merely comply with such Requirements and try to escape from this jailed framework throughout handsketches or analogical, physical, models.
It engenders a sort of tension between the Parties, because the Client’s Representatives (chiefly, Executive Project Managers) seek at constraining the Architectural (Eco-Digital) System within the overarching (Eco-Digital) System of (Eco-Digital) Systems, according to the Systems Engineering-Based Methodology.
A way to solve such a dilemma, or a struggle, could be found in starting the Briefing Process by means of the Simulation of the Users’ Behaviours and Crowd Simulation, so to support the willing Clients to act as Service Designers.
It is a crucial shifting point, because it urges the Clients’ Focus to move from Maintenance & Operations to Occupancy.
It stresses the attitude of both the Clients and the appointed Architects in fronte of the Mac Leamy’s Anticipation Paradigm, but it is also a needed and obliged challenge, echoing, for instance, the participative architectural items, etc.
This scenario could be furtherly strenghtened when imaging to exploit some wearable and non wearable immersive devices.
On the other hand, the Architects’ analogical and «hand-made» sketches have to cope with a Visual, Dynamic, Behavioural Manner of providing the Clients’ Requirements and to meet his/her Needs.
So, apart from the effort in keeping the contents of the Architectural Sketches within the Common Data Environment, a «socialized» option for sharing and debating the Clients’ Expectactions forces the Architects to respond through «Behavioural Sketches», closer to the usual ways of thinking Architecture rather than the rigid, traditional, digitized tools.
However, a convergence between the Behavioural Requirements stemming from the Client and the Spatial Concepts coming from the Architect has to be absolutely attained.
The ultimate question, may be the crucial turning point, could be envisaged in devising how to make the conventional Information Modeling-Based Process pertaining to the Outline, Scheme and Detail Stages really affordable.
In spite of the previous thoughts and remarks, Architects and their own Technical Consultants could gain profit from the probabilistic essence of the Digitally Enabled Design Processes, so to widen the powerful of the so called Optioneering, the Engineeering of the Options, which mainly aids Architects to follow a non linear progressing sequence until the Design Concepts would be frozen.
For instance, you could look at the special and tailored relationships occurring between an Architect and his/her Structural Engineers (Expedition Engineering vs WSP?).
While the usual reaction of the Analogical Client could be bored, a Smart Client might realize that the Optioneered Approach to the Concept and Outline Design makes the flexible lay-outs over the Life Cycle of the Built Asset easier to implement: just from a behavioural point of view.