With Building Information Modeling (BIM), something has epistemologically changed in the digital management of building materials. As architectural models become more calculable, complex, and connected to real supply chains, it is no longer visual verisimilitude that is of key concern (as with hyper-realistic rendering), but rather, information richness—that is, the quality of machine-readable representations as real products-in-the-world. Beset by the proliferation of parametric data, new platforms have emerged to wrest the virtual object economy into an integrated organization. 

BIMobject, “the world’s largest platform for manufacturer-specific BIM content,” is a virtual cloud library with “485,676 parametric BIM objects to download”—and counting.¹ No longer generic textures, brick, carpet, and paint swatches are now embedded with exacting product data. Even air gaps and clear enamel—invisible to the modeler’s eye—are downloadable commodities.

These fastidious screenshots show how the exigencies of smart modeling can turn anything into a comprehensively measurable asset for ease of coordination and specification by the machine. Digitally modeled materials are no longer mere graphic placeholders but durable proxies promising stakeholders a fully foreseeable, error-free, data-lossless future.² As the adage goes, “pixels are cheaper than bricks.”³ Having supplanted the trade catalog library, the proprietary BIM object becomes a new site of competition for suppliers and manufacturers. Product lines offering software-compliant digital doubles tend to be adopted into 3D models, which may, in turn, lead to real project specifications.⁴ As BIM continues to be a de facto managerial medium of the global Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry, one can’t help but wonder how its proxy materiality might be critically redirected.