If I say “S 0560-G30Y”, the majority of you would think I come from Mars. Those of you that are thinking about a green apple probably are colour experts and are confident with the Natural Colour System (NCS). Actually, that odd formula is a perfect ID for a certain kind of green (G) with a pinch (30) of yellow (Y), quite bright (05) and intense (60). Obviously, you can imagine exactly that colour only knowing the system we are referring to, but it’s not enough: the system have to be systematic too, but not all system are.

Info sharing to save time and money

A shared and systematic reference system is mandatory in a BIM process: that emerged yesterday during the most interesting meeting about BIM I’ve attended since I’ve moved to London. During the event, organised by HP and hosted by RIBA, Rob Charlton – Space Group, and Paul Beaty-Pownall – BPR Architects, presented their professional experiences.

The 5P formula that Rob Charlton proposed (Product, Performance, Price, Program, Pay-back) is a bright road map to approach BIM. The 5P have to be shared by the players at the very beginning of the process, and defining a common work space is strategic in order to share tools and methodologies. Charlton put the accent on accessibility: information (the only “I” admissible in BIM, I say) has not just to be exhaustive, correct, and congruent, but it has to be accessible, that means being understandable, readable, not ambiguous. This is the very basis for communication and shareability of information.

Paul Beaty-Pownall talked, among other things, about the projects’ naming, a part I particularly appreciate because of my passion for systems and taxonomy. He showed as a string composed by around 20 alphanumeric signs identifies exactly the main information about the project (team, employer, place, work stage, and so on). This naming is perfectly unambiguous and, knowing the reference system, information is completely accessible.

[Mr Beaty-Pownall showed a similar approach to name layers. They use Vectorworks, a Nemetschek software as Allplan, a BIM software I know very well, and probably given the common German origin (Germans are masters in the Art of classification), both software keep layers to organize data (Actually Allplan uses a double system layer/files), very useful to translate information from BIM to CAD, indeed.]

What’s more, that naming system shows as the BIM approach requires that the data setting come first the data itself. The classical entropic CAD process:

create a file > work on it > save it (somewhere) naming it(somehow)

in the BIM’s era changes (or should change) as follows:

naming > open > work

So, before starting the design process, the process itself should be designed.

Going back to the colour, the NCS is so well conceived that all information are not ambiguous, they are univocal and accessible. What’s more, since the classification system came first the colours, the 1050 colours of today could be unlimited increased keeping a proper singular identity for each colour. This features is not so common in the world of colour.

Ambiguous reference systems and information: an example with colour

The RAL system identifies colours by 4 numbers but only the first specifies the hue (1 for Yellow, 2 for Orange, 3 for Red, and so on). When a new colour is introduced in the system, its name is a progressive number: so, the very first red to be created is called ‘3000’ and the last one in that family is the ‘3033’, but you can’t imagine if the colour ‘3018’ is more bright or saturated than the ‘3020’ one.

These colours are described also by a literary evocative name: the Ultramarine blue(Uktramarinblau in German) is reminiscent of the original inorganic pigments obtained by Lapis Lazuli coming across the sea. Lapis Lazuli (simply means Blue stone, from the LatinLapis, stone, and the Arabic Lazuardi, the sapphire’s colour, blu). So, “Ultramarine” is a name originally referred to a geographic system shared by Medieval painter, after it became a name referred to an historic system until the impressionist, and today is merely a reminiscent because the chemical production process is deeply changed from the origin.

Sometime, names are merely evocative and they work well if a range of experience are shared: ‘moss green’ means something for someone had visited a northern forest but probably it means nothing for those grown in Morocco. This kind of naming is very ambiguous: try to googling images for “forest green” to have an evidence.

Cultural belonging makes differences. A colour designer I know, Viky Syriopolou, told me about an international workshop she attended years ago. The trainers asked to select a colour called “Antique pink” by a palette. The European participants selected a light red, with low saturation, more or less bright. The Japanese ones selected something close to Magenta.

Such a naming don’t bring information, not more than the name ‘Tom’ tells about a guy named Tom, but if you need to obtain information by reading a name, you have to share a reference system, as the NCS does.

Colour is not something aesthetic, more often the colour brings information. So, being sure that colours used in communication are unambiguous and accessible, should be mandatory in the BIM process.

Colour: accessibility, univocality, shareability

When colour brings information, accessibility, univocality, and shareability should be indispensable.

Accessibility of the information about the colour is what is described above referring to naming and reference systems. But accessibility of colour is more important when we use colour to bring information (an electrical scheme) or simply we create a text.

Maybe this kind of accessibility could be the easiest to achieve by extending the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines concepts (WCAG), set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), to the whole digital and printed documentation produced during the design process.

The principle that the contrast between text and background shouldn’t go down a determined ratio (easily checked using on-line tools) is essential for PDF, Power Point slides, large or small printed documents and such principle should be prevalent on each other consideration (brand included). Probably, taking in consideration that a lot of people (around 20% of the male population) is affected by a form of colour blindness, a more accurate check could be required beyond the contrast one.

Univocality is more complicated to achieve. Using the NCS Index I’m quite sure that the colour I’m watching is the same my colleague is watching in Japan. The name system is univocal and, more important, producing the NCS Index “the tolerances are set to achieve colour accuracy and provide clear limits of how much the colour can deviate from the absolute match before a difference starts to become visible or unacceptable”.

Univocality and shareability are strictly connected in the digital domain of colour. Understanding that the classical RGB receipt is perfectly useless to identify a colour is a good premise.

Calibration and devices’ profiles management is surely a good start for a BIM team.

Being aware that the the CAD/BIM software’s palette include colour not exactly printable is a step ahead in shareability.

Understanding that the differences between colours could be lost printing a file, suggests to use very different hues in technical drawings.

Once upon a time the Rotring pen. Because of its price, architects and engineers was used to use only few pens: one small, one medium, one large. Lines are perfectly distinguishable meaning ‘view’ or ‘section’ and few dotted lines were enough to describe axes and projection. Rarely colours were used, and when they did they were useful and easily recognizable: red, sometimes green. Correcting a mistake was an hard business, so the drafts-men were particularly careful. All the texts were readable if someone had been able to write it by hand. The level of detail was an aware choice. Hard time to design, but communication was clear.

But then, CAD coming, and chaos was.

Thousands colours, hundreds dotted lines and fonts, unlimited possibilities in zooming and text sizing, the malediction of copy-and-past, the mystery of the plot scale, a boundless space to archive files: all this things erected the new Babel.

The digital era offers great possibilities, but BIM process requires accuracy and maybe chasteness., because accessibility and shareability of information are values requiring something of the past wise and accuracy.