A new process is revolutionizing the way buildings, campuses and cities are being planned. BIMstorm, as it is known, is the brainchild of Kimon Onuma, FAIA,
President and Founder of Onuma, Inc., an architectural firm and software
development company that promotes integrated processes driven by architectural
knowledge. Recently, following his keynote presentation at the 2011 GeoDesign
Summit, Mr. Onuma was interviewed by Karen Richardson of ESRI and discussed
his vision for the convergence of GIS, facilities management and building information modeling (BIM).
What is a BIMstorm?
In the words of Mr. Onuma, "a BIMstorm in architectural terms is a charrette. It's a workshop. In an architectural charrette, when you are planning you get a lot of people in the room together from different points of view and you collaborate in a short period of time. You're brainstorming and throwing things on paper." His firm worked off of this idea and said "what if we could take a collaborative process like this and actually turn it into a 21st century approach using technology."
Using the BIMstorm approach, industry professionals from around the world can log in on the Internet using Onuma's software, share their tools with others and collaborate in real time. Projects are both real and theoretical and participants can bounce ideas off of one another and share their approach to a design challenge. It also allows for the creation of "train wrecks," things that don't work early on, so the group can see the implications of doing things a certain way. According to Mr. Onuma, it's a great benefit to industry professionals as "no single person has all the answers so we bounce things off each other and it's a dynamic process."
To learn more about how you can BIMstorm and to hear the interview Ms. Richardson conducted with Kimon Onuma, please click here to request a link to download the entire "Taking the World by BIMstorm" podcast.