Blockchain and NFT: a novel approach to support BIM and Architectural Design

Digital Design is becoming more advanced by the year, software more sophisticated, and products of ever-increasing quality. In the design and implementation processes of structural works, Building Information Modeling (BIM) has now established itself as a standard process in professional and non-professional environments. In particular, the creation of BIM families is a topic of great interest to engineers and designers who can focus on describing a single object in every detail before it is included in a larger, more complex project. Since they represent digital products, specific problems could arise, particularly copyright management and certification of digital files, which must be able to be shared within the entire reference project, which is sometimes large and complex. This paper aims to solve these issues by leveraging blockchain technology as a tool for certification and attribution of authorship and/or ownership of a particular file. Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) represent an excellent opportunity for the digital design world as they were born precisely to manage the ownership of digital assets in a secure manner certified by the Blockchain. The results show how BIM and Blockchain technologies can work together and benefit from each other.