BIM-based Process for Cooperative Housing Design

Cooperative housing has been developed since 1970s. By sharing the cost of land purchase and shared facilities, people who cannot afford buying a residence can design, build or renovate a community and their units together by their own will. The role of future-residents has changed from buyers to owners who can design their own homes. It requires professionals, a series of activities and a good education program to help them from preparation to maintenance. The most important aspects of the process of working on the project together are that future-residents know each other and build up community consciousness, providing them with a sense of security. However, the high cost of time and effort for both residents and architects is a big obstacle to building such community. Building Information Modeling (BIM) has contributed new tools and created more possibilities of cooperation between architects, engineers and contractors. The effect is more obvious in complicated projects and includes less mistakes, reduced time, more accurate design, real-time visualization, etc. Nevertheless, owners are not addressed in the BIM cooperation and the process usually becomes a black box for the owners because of information intransparency. Cooperative housing focuses on the owners (a group of clients) during the design process and creates better community life, but is very complicated. BIM technology may provide a better way for the future-residents to participate. This paper is aimed to introduce BIM technology into the cooperative housing design process and prototype Co-BIM, a cooperating platform, to support the future-residents and architects during the cooperative housing design process.