Historical Architecture and BIM Modelling: Between Representation of Reality and Conceptual Abstraction

Abstract

The essay aims to explore the applications of BIM to design regarding historic buildings, which will become mandatory in Italy from 2025 for public works above €1 million. Despite the advantages in coordinated data management and information sharing among the actors involved in contracts, problems related to the geometric representation and semantic definition of the virtual entities that populate the models have been recognized by the scientific community. Critical issues that have emerged from the study of significant experiences can be traced back to the difficulty of adapting tools designed for the projects of new buildings to the characteristics of the cultural heritage. In particular, the complexity of proposing congruent categorisations and parameterisations seems related to only partial correspondence between historical building components, IFC classes and BIM software categories. These limitations often lead to the identification of contingent solutions and expedients, which solve only the problems of geometric representation. In contrast, the ability to adequately share information stored in databases, interoperable through the IFC format, is conveyed by an appropriate semantic description. Formal representation in the BIM environment effectively refers to standardized industrial production, reproducibility of building elements and, more generally, to the goals of globalisation. Thus, the proposed reflections aim to encourage a conscious use of these tools and to outline implementation perspectives useful to bring the digital environment closer to the concrete reality of historical architecture, unique and irreproducible in origin and transformation, often realized through artisanal processes and anchored to specific contexts in multiple aspects.