A BIM-based Framework for Assessing Architectural Competition Entries

Architectural competitions have been traditionally used to select best design practices. The basis of assessment for competitions has typically involved non-technical concepts of quality, subjective and emotional appreciations of experiences, and inseparable accord of formal, functional, aesthetic and contextual values (Ronn, 2011), rather than clear-cut objective and precisely measured values as in the engineering domain (Nashed, 2005; Nelson, 2006). Criteria for judgment usually focus on design parti and clarity of concept, novelty of architectural approach, context compliance, spatial organization, functional adaptability, economical solutions, and design flexibility. The assessment process, although presumably comprehensive and involving multiple evaluation techniques and resources, may still overlook important technical issues that may be fundamentally significant to the exclusion or approval of a given entry. This paper introduces a framework for assessing architectural competition entries aided by concepts of building information modeling (BIM).