For many years the computer was seen in architecture as a tool for making a fair copy: an idea worked out by hand would be turned into a drawing on screen. Today the computer produces not the output of the design but its structure. With the two regulations published in the Official Gazette of 5 August 2026, this shift is no longer a matter of preference — it has become the legal basis of the building permit process.
The role of the computer in digital design
Digital design is a way of working in which the designer defines rules and relationships instead of drawing line by line. Floor height, façade solid-to-void ratio, sun angle, floor area ratio, parking requirement or view orientation are set up as parameters; when those parameters change, the model regenerates itself.
In practice this means that, instead of looking for a single "correct" scheme at concept stage, dozens of alternatives can be compared in measurable terms. On a residential block, the effect of the massing arrangement on shading, façade length and saleable area can be tested within hours. Architectural judgement then brings intuition and data together at the same table rather than setting them against each other.
The same logic applies on the production side. A parametrically defined façade generates a dimension schedule directly for the manufacturer, while a revision to a floor plan flows automatically into the related sections, quantities and cost tables. On large-scale residential and office projects this creates a difference measured in weeks.
The less discussed but, in practice, hardest-working gain of model-based work is checking: interdisciplinary clash detection, verification of escape distances, catching inconsistencies between sheets. On paper these were tasks that tired the human eye; when working from a single model, a contradiction between plan and section becomes structurally impossible. This is what directly shortens the pre-submission punch list.
From Ozalid to IFC: A Short History of Project Delivery
Those who lived through this profession’s recent past will remember: projects were drawn on tracing paper in India ink, reproduced on the ozalid machine with its smell of ammonia, sheets were folded and filed in a set order, and every copy was signed one by one. Drawing was the labour itself; even copying was a craft of its own.
When the computer replaced the drawing board, what changed was, for a long time, only the medium of production. The model was built on the computer, calculations were run in software, revisions were processed on the file; yet the final step of the process stayed the same: the project was printed, folded, signed and submitted to the authority as a physical file. A digitally produced project was reduced back to an analogue document at the moment of delivery.
This step is more costly than it looks. A sheet printed on paper loses the information behind it; what material a wall is made of, how many square metres a room measures, is no longer readable data but a line that has to be measured and rewritten. Technical staff at the authority are forced to check digitally produced information by hand. In revisions, which sheet is current is often left to the date written on the paper; archiving turns into a physical space problem. And there is the matter of consistency: on paper, the plan, the section and the quantity take-off of the same project are independent documents, whereas the model at their source is one.
PDF was the intermediate link in this chain: it carried paper to the screen but did not change its logic — a sheet was still a sheet, and the information was still locked inside the line. IFC is something else. An IFC file is not the image of a drawing but the building itself: a wall is no longer two parallel lines; it is an object defined by its material, its layers, its fire class and its quantities. Along the line running from ozalid to IFC, what is delivered is changing for the first time — no longer the picture of the project, but its information.
The new regulations close precisely this gap.
The Official Gazette: project submission goes digital
Two regulations prepared by the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change were published in the Official Gazette no. 33331 of 5 August 2026. The first sets out the digital standards to which projects are to be prepared; the second governs how those projects will be submitted, reviewed, approved and archived through the Electronic Project Management System (e-PYS).
Under the regulation, the architectural, structural, electrical and mechanical projects on which the building permit is based will be built on Building Information Modelling (BIM) and submitted in IFC format, while the two-dimensional sheets produced from those models will be provided in PDF/A format. Submission, deficiency notices, revision and approval will all run through e-PYS; where secure electronic signatures are used, the need for printed documents largely disappears.
The scope covers new buildings in areas with an implementation development plan. Detached buildings of no more than two storeys excluding the basement and with a total construction area not exceeding 200m², together with agricultural and livestock buildings that do not qualify as integrated facilities, are left outside the scope. The transition is phased rather than immediate: a timetable spread over several years is envisaged, starting with the higher-area projects in the metropolitan cities.
What does this mean for the client?
The new arrangement turns the output of an architectural practice from a "drawing sheet" into data. A BIM model is at once a permit file, a source of quantities and a building archive to be handed over for the operational period. This brings a new criterion to the fore in choosing the project author: does the practice only design well, or can it also build that design into a data structure that is standards-compliant and transferable?
BFTA Mimarlık has for years kept digital design tools and model-based workflows at the heart of our projects . We see the framework introduced by the regulations as the formal recognition of a way of working we have long advocated. The phased transition allows time; even so, we believe that clients who build their digital infrastructure today will be a step ahead both in the permit process and in investment decisions.
We have a separate guide that takes the scope of the regulations, the transition timetable and the rules on file order point by point: A Transition Guide to Digital Submission for Architectural Projects.