3 CHAPTER 1 Smart Buildings/Smart(er) Designers: BIM and the Creative Design Process Glenn Goldman, New Jersey Institute of Technology Andrzej Zarzycki, New Jersey Institute of Technology 1.1 INTRODUCTION Despite the myth of the heroic architect, popularized by Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead, whose Howard Roark–like designs spring entirely from personal inspiration, architects and engineers need information to design buildings. Few people today question the needs of the clients and/or users so at least a rough program of activity spaces is usually embedded within the design process if it doesn’t pre- cede the actual building design. But there is a lot more information that helps architects make decisions during the design process. While it may not be possible to know everything involved in the design and construction processes prior to the completion of a building, there are assumptions that having infor- mation is better than not having it, that informed decisions are better than uninformed ones, and that design is a knowledge-based activity. If one does not object to designing with information that includes maximizing building performance, budgeting, and material optimizations, then building information modeling (BIM), almost by definition, has the potential to improve the products and processes of archi- tectural design. Building information modeling provides the implied promise of integrating all types of needed data into one file or model (perhaps with separate but linked files with easy bilateral information transfer). While the fulfillment of that promise depends, in part, on both the pace of commercial software develop- ment and academic researchers, any current lack of a single integrated information model is not a reason to avoid the process. Furthermore, as long as there are competing products for use by architects, the