Three Dimentionality

I was in Minneapolis a few months ago and took some pictures of the Lumber Exchange, one of the first tall buildings constructed there. Here’s an overall view of the original wing (the building is L shaped, with the wings constructed at different times):

It’s not deserted – the seemingly blank windows are an unfortunate effect of the replacement windows without mullions and the way the light was hitting the glass. You can sort-of see the big arched opening at the center of the ground floor. The newer wing

has another big arched entrance. That one, close up, is solid masonry from the plane of the main facade back to the plane of the door.

But the older wing entrance has a curious setback/undercut geometry to it, where there’s some space between the main facade and the plane of the door:

I don’t know that I’d want the second-floor office with that window in the curved portion of wall, partially blocked by the entrance arch. I’m not actually looking to criticize this weird space. I think some weirdness in architecture is a good thing. But think about the way we traditionally represent buildings and how difficult it is to describe that space. An elevation of the facade will show the big arch and, behind it, some of the entry wall. A first floor plan won’t show the space; a second-floor plan will show some of it. An elevation of the entry wall will show some of it, but not the out-of-plane aspects. A reflected ceiling plan of the space will show some of it. What does the masonry on the back side of the main facade look like? Smooth? Textured? Secret messages carved in? Do you need a reverse elevation?

I can hear the BIM proponents saying that this problem is solved with 3D software, but it isn’t really, because that’s not how direction is communicated to the laborers in the field, either in 1887 when this was built, or today. Maybe in the future construction workers will be regularly using AR glasses or other tech that allows them to look at a 3D model while working, but now we’re still trapped in the same 2D-representation world as in the past.