Encouraging Computational Skills: Evaluating BIM Course to Support Design Studio Aswin Indraprastha School of Architecture, Planning, and Policy Development Institut Teknologi Bandung Indonesia aswin@itb.ac.id Abstract—Architectural education curricula are inevitably facing the challenge to lead and stay relevant to the expanding territory in architecture, engineering, and construction industries. The design studio, as a capstone of this education system, now meets the rise of computational tools in every aspect of the design process. The question arises on the method to incorporate the increasing development of computational tools into a systematic structure in the curricula that supports and enhance the design and its delivery. This study reports an analysis of the evaluation of five years of implementation of BIM-related courses in the undergraduate study planned to support the use of computational tools for the design studio at the School of Architecture, Planning and Policy Development, Institut Teknologi Bandung. This paper is concerned with the pedagogical approaches and content of teaching materials concerning limitations and constraints given by the curriculum structure. Using content analysis from course evaluation forms and interviews with the students, we analyze and suggest that the essential skills development necessary for the undergraduate level is modeling and documentation of design intent. The pragmatic approach that focuses on those two factors has benefit for design studio projects particularly on specific project typology with varied repetition components and less articulated form. However, our study also found that introducing BIM courses at 2 nd year of the undergraduate program was less useful since it required a proper understanding of additional and technical knowledge of building materials, construction, and others. On the other hand, to tackle the great subjects of BIM, we employ a blended-learning system where we provided curated online tutorials into each of the BIM topics as complementary teaching materials. By this strategy, we optimize learning outcomes while minimizing the effort to pack a wide range of BIM subjects into teaching materials. Based on our findings, the value of computational BIM, therefore, lied on the comprehensive understanding of modeling design intent and integrated method for design delivery that we argue are essential for students entering the workforce. Furthermore, teaching computational skills through BIM to support design studio generates a computational milieu among the students where it encourages students to learn by their peers and various source materials that allowing them to expand their skills across platforms. We presented a detailed description and analysis of the course and outcomes, teaching agenda, student projects, feedbacks, findings, and discussion in the paper. Keywords: BIM, design studio, computational skills I. BACKGROUND AND ISSUE Architectural education curricula inevitably facing the challenge to lead and stay relevant to the expanding territory in architecture, engineering, and construction industries. The design studio, as a capstone of this education system, now meets the rise of computational tools in every aspect of the design process, particularly BIM. There have been studies and researches by academia, mainly concerned with the studio-type learning environment that impacted by BIM. Ambrose in 2006 challenged design studio pedagogy to embrace an innovative design thinking into design studio using BIM application that delivered through an integrated process of design and construction with the support from various methods and tools such as simulation tool, fabrication tool. The point was the possibility of starting a design studio with a building rather than a conventional approach that ending with building design. BIM, as a methodology of design, might reposition curricular goals, concepts, and knowledge in the design studio [1]. In 2012, he suggested a studio model that seeks out a new method and pedagogical shift represented in BIM-based methodology by establishing new re-iterative relationships between design, data, and communication [2]. Ning Gu and de Vries (2012) proposed two approaches of implementing BIM into studio curricula by a focus on the collaboration aspect of BIM: 1) intra-disciplinary collaboration within architecture discipline and 2) interdisciplinary collaboration across disciplines[3]. Delatorre et al. (2015) reported another academic experience of teaching BIM in university, whereby one of the essential factors needed for understanding the BIM system was though interdisciplinary, collaborated, and integrated processes, supervised by lectures[4]. Another report came from Holzer (2019), suggesting the importance of blended learning methods of teaching BIM where learning content comprised of complementary in-class and curated online components[5]. Bringing into the context, BIM (Building Information Modeling) as a new platform and methodology in AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) industry for design-construction-management workflows inevitably disrupts the design process from inception to the detailed design. In the context of BIM as information modeling, the principles and concepts behind 3D virtual building modeling and its representation are necessary to study, and therefore essential and object to be critically evaluated. Computational thinking, information database, and digital workflow underlying BIM software nowadays dated back in 1975 when Eastman [6] worked on the prototype of Building Description System (BDS) where single information in a Advances in Engineering Research, volume 192 EduARCHsia & Senvar 2019 International Conference (EduARCHsia 2019) Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL. 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