**Abstract**

Big data sciences demand the significant role of the architect. Particularly, facilitate the birth of an antifragile construction industry and more robust data sciences community of professionals. Skilled community necessary to build sustainable liveable cities with emerging creator's economy. Liveability, well-being, and sense of belonging in the city are connected. Conversely, dismissive attitude by decision-makers towards architectural practice and education, even among architects, in recognizing architecture as data-driven and source of data deserve rethink. Here the chapter demonstrates architects as data scientists and the symbiotic relationship that exist between architecture and 3D computer graphics while highlighting emerging data sciences opportunities and threats. The chapter adopted principally reviews of scholarly literatures, draws from authors' 20-years personal experiences, and industry leaders' views. The language is accessible yet academically concise. The chapter concluded with recommendations, including highlights of big data technologies potential transformation of 3D computer graphics. The implications are policy, design, and education.

**Keywords:** 3-D computer, graphics, architecture, data science, big data, city, Web 3.0, creators economy

### **1. Introduction**

Do Big Data sciences require any role of the architect? Is there any merit for the dismissive attitude against architectural practice as big data knowledge based? Are the architectural institutions agile and responsive to the transformation opportunities big data sciences are bringing to the architectural education and architects? Is architecture data driven and source of data, including does graphics play any role? The chapter sets out to find the answers. In [1] computer 3D graphics, a term first coined by William Fetter in 1961 to describe his work at Boeing, have played a significant role in the design, engineering, and gaming industry. Nonetheless, the impact on 3D computer graphics, like with all architectural endeavors, of the explosion of big data fuelled by data sciences since 2000 will just be as transformative like the internet (see [2]). While earliest 3D computer graphics can be traced to late 1970s with the 3-D Art Graphics by Kazumasa Mitazawa released in June 1978 is one the earliest [3].

Graphic writing as structured visual expression is not strange in Africa as recognized in [4] "with multiple varied communication tools, including written symbols, religious objects, oral tradition, and body language" deployed in organizing "daily life, enable interactions between human and the natural and spiritual worlds, and preserve and transmit cosmological and cosmological belief systems". Conversely, Big data is more than communication, powered by the data sciences and associated technologies. For instance, in understanding an individual (for medical or housing needs), big data will include all unstructured and structured forms [4] in addition to the individual's medical history and other demographic details. To understand industry for operational optimization, as noted in [5] big data "is turning mobility, medical, automobile, and pharmaceutical billions of gigantic data into actionable insights to help make informed business decisions, including all significant industries. Big Data is providing every person 320 times more information provided by the third century store house of knowledge, the Library of Alexandria [2] Blockchain is providing the shared, secured holding and transparency of big data in never before accelerated ways as in video-1 [6]. Nevertheless, a "multifaceted team with complementary skills are needed to realize the full value of big data" [7].

Conversely, the construction industry seems indifferent in harnessing its big data. A few reasons are:


Many things have changed, but the architects' fingers, eyes, and creative intellect are yet valuable means to ends in architecture. The sense organs capture, process, analyse, memorise as part of "database of the mind." The same is share and enjoy or rejected as pattern, images, sounds, and alike. Depending on the creative database, architects can deliver static non-interactive alphanumeric multisensory models before the emergence of computer 3-D graphics and its rapid advancements. Conversely, the imagination, hands, and simple tools like pencil pen, rule, Set Square, and paper, for another 30 years ahead (as in [11]), the architect, will continue express and communicates aided by standard architectural graphic symbols and elements with understanding of design principles. Discussing graphics, Obina Wodike, an architect and Graphic lecturer with Port Harcourt Polytechnic, noted graphics is not new to human civilization. Wodike buttressed his point tracing graphics to the Biblical times, Egyptian Heliographic, and cited Thomson (1993). Thomson connected graphics and the era when historians, sociologists, linguists, and visual communication students produced art for commercial purposes, including mass consumption or graphic design, with 1986 marking the formation of Graphic Design Education. The importance of "origin" as a continuous influencer of the future progress validating the continuous influence of the seemingly primitive tools -architects finger, pencil, practices, and more- was further buttressed in [12]. Stating, "the origin and practice in unmasking assumptions within current forms and practice" [12] while in [13]

*Leveraging on Data Sciences: Review of Architectural Practice and Education in Nigeria DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.103097*

described graphic navigation to imply the manipulation of graphic devices, including organization, hierarchy, line weights, colors, and more on a "surface" which range from a book to a highly complex computer screen. Organizations must embrace learning culture and there must be effective strategies to leverage on emerging opportunities.
