BIM-Driven Design Approach for Islamic Historical Buildings

The utilization of building information modeling (BIM) has become a necessary endeavor for the architectural, structural, and constructional informatics of traditional Islamic buildings. The architectural and structural data of historical Islamic buildings have thus been digitally classified and categorized in the Islamic architectural style (IAS’s) Library. The IAS library guides and aids architects in understanding and analyzing the architectural and structural components of traditional buildings, prior to designing preservation projects and developing or enhancing new projects either before and during the design phases of the project. This paper concentrates on reviving the use of parametric three-dimensional architectural components and the informatics data of the Ottoman Islamic architecture style and character. This research focuses on the regions of the Hejaz, Egypt, and Sudan Islamic Architecture Characters (HIAC, EIAC, and SuIAC) of components used on the exterior and interior of buildings during the architectural design and documentation phase of a project. The intent is to integrate the Hejazi Islamic Architecture Character (HIAC), Egyptian Islamic Architecture Character (EIAC), and Sudan Islamic Architecture Character (SuIAC) libraries and the process of BIM to provide parametric BIM generated architectural and structural components to designers’ various architectural and structural parametrical elements based in a software application. The BIM library of Islamic traditional buildings strives to ease the use of the HIAC, EIAC, and SuIAC BIM architectural components to assert the optimal accuracy in design and data through the use of digital application library. The application of BIM-Islamic architectural style (IAS) plug-in has been demonstrated through various projects from the Middle East for leading architectural offices and firms and clarifies how this IAS digital library could be applied to a project’s design in a real-world setting. The Ottoman Islamic architecture style library is the first step toward initiating and creating a comprehensive BIM library for Islamic historical building architecture components that can then be used to facilitate design conservations and develop many traditional Islamic facilities around the world.