Anand Bhatt

I agree with Srivathsan on many aspects of the job description as he lists it. Especially as he suggests we set about a process with certain directions in thinking about Architecture Education and Practice as it touches upon Computation and the related issues. Only, I cannot be so generous, for personal and temperamental reasons, so say we should function as a resource center; one tends to be more provocative – always attempting to jump-start a process or take a process to speculative ends where it might break down, continuously break-down and reveal more about the nature of the thing we are attempting.  Reading Srivathsan’s proposals again, I think two levels are suggested here, I’ve summarized my reading of the two (with some other interpretations added-on);

• A level of intervention; where computation provides the infrastructures, pathways and possibilities for architectural education and practice. Where it 'facilitates', like railways and telephones, and by 'facilitating', computation may actually generate a whole new geography for practice and education in India. This has already happened, to an extent, and one can imagine we are providing a form or structure to many spontaneous happenings. We must move to capitalize on the unique possibilities offered to Indian practices; such as the strong infrastructure in IT, and the competitive edge of our Information Technology manpower the world over, the relatively cheap costs of producing information technologies, unique industrial configurations such as the Small Scale Sector industry (SSI) and their capacity in producing single-machine processes at about the same scale as architectural practices. There are also other CoA initiatives (distance education, and the need for Indian colleges to represent their curriculum in the public domain using a common format) we can immediately say something.
• A level of pedagogy and andragogy; where computation itself is the object of study in education and practice. In education, it is a matter of teaching computers to undergraduate students, creating graduate courses at many levels, creating research laboratories. In practice, it is a matter of writing legislation for a CAAD-Based architectural practice, and inciting Indian practitioners to research. There are also pragmatic issues, such as global competitiveness of Indian Practices vis-a-vis similar international practices, the cost of delivery, building and civic infrastructure management techniques and so on... We must also keep in mind the secondary levels of architectural education and practice here, such as ITI courses in architectural assistantship, CAAD management and draftsmanship. A third level of interest to me is in the delivery of building components, digitally manufactured – I always wonder if architects can upgrade the small contracting industry and create another SSI pertaining to the building industry.

I think the charter of this committee is somewhere in-between education and practice, it is placed in a middle for a strategic reason: application of computational methods can dissolve traditional boundaries between education and practice – computers are everywhere, and there can be used to create all types of inflexions, generating new possibilities and institutional formulation. The August deadline looks good to me, we must start drawing-up an agenda for the meeting. Also, we need a number of respondents who can supply us with questions and issues; here are my suggestions:

• The Indian constitute of Architects IT Committee, the IIA has an IT committee for a long time, and we must obtain a listing of their activities, so far

• My research centers at CEPT University, we can use this one to experiment with CAAD issues; and test the committee's proposals

• Individuals (who have already registered an interest in this exercise):