Tipo e tipologia. Prospettive di ricerca a scala urbana per i sistemi HBIM

The essay examines potential connected to extension of typological approaches in the parametric modelling of BIM systems. The applications on historic buildings highlight problems related to expedients and adaptations necessary to transpose into digital geometrically and semantically complex artifacts. These difficulties lead to exploring simplified procedures of representation, oriented to decomposition of architectural organisms and classification of building components. The typological studies aim at identifying the common characteristics of heterogeneous manufactured products and they are designed to order directories of figurative or construction schemes. Therefore, they seem to support the IFC standard and BIM software settings, articulated by classes and families related to graphical objects and building elements. The significance of type in historical architecture and digital systems, however, presents a clear antinomy, linked to the different meaning – generic or specific – assigned to this term. This discrepancy can be traced back to replacement of artisan traditions by industrial processes, which leads to selection of alternative criteria of association or differentiation in taxonomy. The possibility of creating digital classification systems connected to characteristics of historic buildings is therefore subject to semantic definition of entities and to clear correspondences between IFC classes, software families and constructive components. An examination aimed at deepening the formal and typological representation of building elements in BIM systems foreshadows implementation perspectives useful to refine the description of existing architecture, to optimize the performance of digital tools, to create models for the management and conservation of historical centres.