response: Jose Kos

Instead of strictly following your guidelines for the discussion, I would like
to add few other suggestions for the discussion. I don't know much about schools
of architecture in India and my suggestions may be based on a wrong idea I have
from them. Those suggestions are actually based on the South-American context, 
particularly the Brazilian schools.

I know that India is known for the strength in the software industry, which
requires more focus on education and research and less investment than in the
hardware industry.

My suggestion is that following similar principles, the focus of IT education in
schools of architecture in India should be based on the creative use of tools
that don't require complex and expensive hardware. It's more important to
involve a larger number of students that are able

to search for creative ways to use the available tools. I assume that there is a
great diversity of schools in the country, particularly related to their
computing resources. Therefore, we should direct this discussion not to the
minority of top schools that are better equipped.

As you mentioned, multimedia, film and animation could be noteworthy directions
for creative applications to architecture with relatively low cost for the
schools.

It's very important to concentrate on faculty education to support different
directions of students' demands. Another important issue is the exchange of
information among schools and VDSs are powerful tools to integrate uneven
schools within the country.

Post-graduate schools have a great respQonsibility in this field, particularly
for the education of faculty from less developed areas and for the unfold
research on areas that consider IT within the current context of architectural
education in the country.

I don't think that this direction is followed by any country in South America,
but I have a feeling that India is better prepared to follow it.

Jose Kos, 
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil