Miguel Villegas Critiques IFC Standard, Proposes Open Ontologies for BIM

In a recent article on Veredes, architect Miguel Villegas Ballesta argues that the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) standard, developed by buildingSmart, is an ineffective 'esperanto' for the AEC industry. He compares the IFC to the universal language Esperanto, noting that while it aims to facilitate communication, it falls short due to its English-centric definitions, anisotropic coverage of disciplines, and the need for interpretation. Villegas contends that the IFC's semantic layer requires multiple translation steps, leading to potential misunderstandings. Instead, he advocates for 'open ontologies'—project-specific, ad-hoc information structures that can be tailored to each project's needs. He demonstrated this approach in his doctoral thesis, 'Informational Architecture: A Postgraphical Knowledge Model for Architectural Design' (2022), where he built an information structure and a machine that transformed it into a coherent BIM model without relying on IFC. He also cites Pixar's Universal Scene Description (USD) as a promising alternative, noting that the animation and video game industries successfully use such flexible structures. Villegas acknowledges that while IFC remains the dominant standard, he is currently exploring OpenBIM in Blender as a robust research and development initiative. The article includes references to academic papers by Manu Venugopal, Charles M. Eastman, Jochen Teizer, and Mads Holten Rasmussen, among others.