Journal of Architectural Engineering

Forum papers are thought-provoking opinion pieces or essays founded in fact, sometimes containing speculation, on a civil engineering topic of general interest and relevance to the readership of the journal. The views expressed in this Forum article do not necessarily reflect the views of ASCE or the Editorial Board of the journal.

With the rapid adoption of building information modeling (BIM) across diverse industries, the need for a universal standard for BIM data exchanges has become critical for the success of BIM applications. Questions of the level of development and interoperability of BIM as methods to exchange data and integrate various model-based applications into an efficient work process have come to the forefront of BIM standardization to improve the design and construction of facilities. Current BIM software authoring tools center on conventional structural systems and are not yet adequate for modeling floating structures. Hydro-supported structures comprise a special type of structure that relies primarily on the hydraulic buoyancy of the supporting water body to maintain equilibrium and safety. It is an area that is increasingly drawing the attention of architects and engineers to resolve many issues in coastal areas and to deal with issues related to increased flooding and tropical storms, such as shoreline stabilization, hurricane response, alternative energy, and rainwater collection and utilization. The study centers on expanding BIM standardization for designing and analyzing floating and amphibious structures. It seeks to address the information delivery manual (IDM) and model view definitions (MVDs) as they provide the basis for data exchange specifications for the industry foundation classes (IFC) schema. This research aims to enable a proficient BIM workflow for designing hydro-supported structures characterized by the coherent, organized, and reproducible exchange of consistent data that is commonly recognized across the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry.

In modern construction projects, architects, engineers, contractors, and owners who are actively involved in projects use different methods of visualization, such as building information modeling (BIM), physical mock-ups, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR), to support the conceptualizations, representations, and final appearances of their design ideas. These approaches can support design visualization for decision making before final construction. However, unlike BIM visualization where users can only interact with a virtual environment and physical mock-ups where the interaction is only with physical design components, AR can merge physical conditions with computer-generated visual information. This may aid professionals in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industries during design and constructability review sessions. This research studied the use of AR through a structured design review activity involving current industry practitioners in design and constructability review sessions and tested whether the combined virtual–physical nature of AR facilitates the same actions and outcomes suggested by prior work that used virtual reality–based mock-ups or physical mock-ups. In addition, this study identified and analyzed various actions such as decision making, problem solving, and design alternatives that occur as users interact with AR on different mobile computers. This analysis provides an understanding of how different mobile computers, such as wearables and handheld devices showing the same technical AR environment, can lead to different actions among users. This research found that AR can facilitate some of the actions of virtual reality and physical mock-ups in design and constructability review sessions, including decision making, design alternatives, and descriptive, explanative, and problem-solving actions. In addition, different mobile computers led to different observed actions during the design review sessions. For example, handheld devices between 15.24 cm (6 in.) and 25.5 cm (10 in.) enabled more decision-making actions than any other device tested. As additional testing is completed, future findings may be compared with those presented in this work to determine the actions that are consistently seen with AR in design and constructability review sessions. Eventually, this may provide a valuable tool to allow future researchers and practitioners to strategically plan for AR technology use based on what specific human actions are desirable for a given application.

Conservation of ancient buildings to make them long lasting is gaining importance. Lime mortars, which exhibit better strength and durability with progression over time, are used for this purpose. This study emphasizes the effect of adopting the traditional method of slaking and adding a natural polymer extract derived from Bilwa fruit. Lime mortars were slaked for different durations of 1, 15, 30, 60, and 90 days. Further, the admixture was added in concentrations of 5% and 10% to the lime mortar mix. The effects of slaking and the incorporation of the natural polymer extract on the fresh state, mechanical, and physical properties were studied. Durability properties in the form of resistance to salt crystallization and capillary action were also investigated. The microstructure of the mortars was examined through X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), and thermogravimetric differential thermal analysis (TG-DTA) techniques. Characteristics of lime mortar have shown improvement as the age of slaking increases. A similar pronounced effect was observed with the addition of natural polymers.

Buildings are responsible for a third of worldwide energy demand as well as anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, a holistic approach for energy-efficient design over the life cycle of buildings is necessary. In this work, the relationships between structural efficiency, energetic performance, and aesthetic design are explored in the context of tall buildings. The goal is to reduce the structural mass in order to reduce embodied energy while considering operational energy as well as the aesthetic expression of the structure. For this, we propose a framework that integrates code-based structural design of tall buildings with energy demand simulations, and perform a multiobjective optimization for a tall building in various climate zones. We show that structure can act as shading, that is, cooling savings are achieved with respect to a fully glazed building. Further, we illustrate the trade-offs between buildings with reduced mass, with comparatively little cooling savings, and heavier buildings, with increased cooling savings potential, for example, up to 50%. Finally, we discuss the impact of the column design in different climate zones. The resulting trade-offs allow the architect to make an informed decision between structural design and energy efficiency of the building without sacrificing the architectural intent.