François Denis - PhD Researcher
Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Université Libre de Bruxelles
BIM & Data Management
Design For Change
Parametric Design
Decision Making
Buildings' Networks
Building Information Modelling
& Digital tools
Information technologies in general and BIM in particular represent a new paradigm in the construction industry. It induces new processes relying strongly on collaboration between the different stakeholders. These new processes allow the development of new tools gathering, managing and processing this information to improve designers experience and support them while elaborating their concepts. This research focuses on digital BIM-compliant tools and processes supporting designers in improving buildings' transformability (generality or adaptability).
Decision making
& direct feedback
The new information stored within BIM models allow designers to better understand their projects. However, many tools developed by the industry focus mainly on the production phase while decisions made earlier in the design phase have a tremendous impact on the final result. Therefore, this research propose tools and informations for the designer allowing him to make better informed decision throughout the deisgn process, two key phases have been established, the conceptual design phase and the detailed design stage.
Tools and computers are used to process the information quickly and send feedback or useful data to the designer. allowing him to focus on designing and decision making instead of processing data himself.
Building components' networks
mapping & analysis
While working on the assessment of transformable structure, it has been highlighted that connections are of key importance in Design for Change or Design for Disassembly strategies. As buildings are made out of components connected to each other they may be considered as networks. Additionnaly, networks and graph theory rely on a strong mathematical background allowing to analyse or assess such systems. Therefore, it has been proposed to transpose this topics into the scope of transformable buildings allowing to assess building ease of disassembly at the detailed design phase.
Research Topics
Projects
Member of the BIM & ICT technical committee of the BBRI-WTCB-CSTC
Active member of working groups 3 (e-catalogs) and 5 (Education)
Active member of the SIG.3: Data Management (including BIM)
Joint PhD Researcher at the architecturale engineering lab.,
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
& Batir Department, Brussels Poytechnic school,
Université Libre de Bruxelles
Research funded by VLAIO (originally under an IWT grant)
