ABSTRACT
Throughout this book, I have described architecture’s unbinding from the worlds of construction and labor as both a defining trait of the discipline and as the target of a wide array of managerial discourses and technological practices. The Albertian split is today a digital one. “Healing” the split that separates designers from builders through the definition and adoption of digital practices and standards means redefining both. This is today an industry imperative. Illustrating this, a report by the US National Institute of Standards estimates the “cost of inadequate interoperability… among Computer-Aided Design, engineering, and software systems” is close to USD 15.8 billion. 1 The report presents this cost as a result of “redundant data entry, redundant IT systems and IT staff, inefficient business processes, and delays indirectly resulting from those efficiencies.” 2 As these discourses suggest, the increasingly dominant image of design as a technological practice frames “redundancy”—of technologies and processes, but also of people—as a synonym for inefficiency and waste, as it detracts from owners’ financial gains. From this managerial perspective, the success of BIM depends on the definition and adoption of software enabling centralized control over the project, and on the adoption of a common digital standard for design and construction—a digital “lingua franca.” 3
