Circular Immersive Parametric Design Workflow for Sustainable Construction Materials Development
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ISSN: 3057-3939 (Print) | 305-39207 (online)
Publication Date:
01-02-2025
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Universities can play an essential role in educating students on Building and Information
Modelling before they enter the construction industry. Educating students is related to
technological constraints against which researchers and BIM providers face as they accelerate
the process of compatibility and data exchange in BIM workflows. Revit is a leading BIM
platform and works with Enscape, Unity, and other software for translation. Subsequently,
virtual environments have been implemented successfully in residential and commercial
projects However, in Sub-Saharan Africa, the potential for BIM and virtual reality (VR) are
still unexploited for the realization of construction projects. The use of new technologies
could increase the willingness of construction professionals to use BIM. This paper presents
an innovative workflow towards sustainable construction material application through
VR-enabled BIM for architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industries towards
improving circularity. Students applied BIM and VR in a Building Design course.
Therefore, this study introduces a workflow for circular immersive parametric design
(CIPaDe). The CIPaDe Workflow includes stages of 1) material selection for load-bearing and
non-loadbearing elements 2) geometry exploration and 3) unit and systems design applying
modular design, design for disassembly, and design for deconstruction principles. There is
sufficient evidence that the use of BIM and VR in AEC education environments is desirable
and beneficial. The proposed CIPaDe, BIM-into-VR-based workflow is expected to improve
students’ learning performance, provide an environment similar to the real world, increase
the visualization of models before they were built, and enhance their creativity.