Kit di montaggio per l’architettura sovietica (1959-1980). Metodi di progettazione con modelli fisici componibili. Una forma di BIM analogico per un nuovo stile di vita

In the early 1960s, design firms in the USSR began to develop new design tools to cope with the increasing complexity of industrial architecture. Traditional graphic documentation and technical drawing workflows were struggling to keep pace with the rapid development of Soviet cities. The unification and standardisation of construction elements created the opportunity to adopt a modular design system based on the creation of physical models assembled from true-to-scale serial elements. In this way, different experts could collaborate on a single three-dimensional physical model, improving communication, reducing design errors, visualising extremely complex three-dimensional structures and speeding up the overall workflow. Despite its benefits, model-based design has serious drawbacks, namely the complexity of constructing the physical model itself, which requires specialised labour. Furthermore, the lack of flexibility required non-trivial adaptations to match the level of detail of the graphical documentation. This article argues that the modelling method of designing buildings can be seen as an early attempt to create what we commonly refer to today as BIM modelling, not with digital but with physical means, at a time when the first theories of cybernetics were spreading. But designing with models wasn't just a new tool – it reflected the new Soviet way of life. By the end of the seventies, built environments, design objects and even toys began to look more and more like the tools they were designed with.