This article firstly depicts how the conventional domains of both architecture and computing have related each other in terms of their intercommunity of knowledge and wisdom, based on some interesting human relations. For example, in the foreword of the famous computer science text book “Design Patterns”, written by Erich Gamma, Grady Booch said that “Christopher Alexander and his colleagues were perhaps the first to propose the idea of using a pattern language to architect buildings and cities. His idea and the contributions of others have now taken root in the object-oriented software community. In short, the concept of the design pattern in software provides a key to helping developers leverage the expertise of other skilled architects.” Architecture and computing domains actually have shared some of their main ideas for a long time, especially in terms of human relations and the core concept of their area. Known as the father of Building Information Modeling (BIM), Professor Chuck Eastman of Georgia Tech had studied architecture at UC Berkeley, advised by Christopher Alexander, who was introduced above.
The contemporary trend of BIM in Korea has passed the stage of introduction, and entered the stage of its spread and application. The most important benefit from using BIM is the maximization of the effective value of building information which is used seamlessly. Building information is created at the early stage of building lifecycle and used at a suitable time and place according to its seamless accumulation. In this era of sharing, open BIM is one of major concepts in the AEC domain to take advantages of the actual sharing of data and information. In the perspective of the Open BIM Standard, which is an approach to the standardized technique to facilitate the concept of sharing, the BIM road map that is officially planned and announced by Korean government is very encouraging. Korean government-led national research projects such as “BIM-enabled design quality assurance” might be a good example. This article also describes how Open BIM Standard leads the approach of “sharing” rather than the conventional way of “ownership” in order to take advantages of “seamless process of information gathering”. In the rapidly changing circumstances of technology and AEC-FM, Open BIM Standard will be one of the great opportunities to successfully survive and thrive in this domain, reflecting this new era of sharing. Open BIM Standard is going to be one of our most promising directions to follow in the current research and development efforts.