Any Architects In The House?

are there typical nigerian/African houses anymore?
most (not all) house I see have this 'foreign' influence
in a hot country like nigeria you'd think the weather will be taking into consideration but no
some houses are straight from Washington D.C
so many money miss roads and lack of creativity in the system!

i am not an architect and not even planning to be one (I intend being a Computer Scientist) but my younger brother is studying arch, , hanging around with you guys, i guess, is more fun than others

I know there's a real craze to turn Abuja FCT to a mega city comparable to J'burg and others
it is obvious the western influence seems to have placed everyone on his/her feet.
I still try to unravel the concept and architecture behind on this new FCT buildings; the NCC building,
especially in its roof design, Is that meant  to be an antenna or sumtin
I still cannot trace the firm/architect behind this. Can any architect in the house help me unravel this? i need
to understand this building better than i do presently.

@mahal
So who design that building then?

I still don't know

It seems Fredique is right, I just confirmed from their weblink.
http://www.ccecc.com.cn/english/2006-3/200633090711.htm

well, i still haven't gotten an explanation for the roof, 
a mate told me it's a sun filter, to welcome the Vitm. D laden early morning sun
from the violent rays of the afternoons, 

Well, the truth is, I kinda like it,
Nigerian clients ask a lot of question and may want to know the reason for everythin.
It seem this "innovative" or "symbolic" has become a trend especially in the 3 arm cities of Nigeria
Abj, lagos and PH. I intend to use it one of these days, but one have to be prepared with a line
or perhaps words of defense when it's queried, less my Boss would ask me his usual
mischievous question;"do you intend to fund that part of the project with your salary?"
The JBN main office is a good example too.

Good word!!, i was made to eat my words earlier, it's quite clear that a lot of Nigerian architects have failed to prove themselves more useful or better than the Draughtsmen.  the Trained architect should be required to do things that would make the draughtsman run away with his third leg in his pocket, maybe then, clients would see us beyond the principle of just drawing lines.

Actually, he doesn't have such powers, professionally speaking. But in the Nigerian context (in many cases), people don't follow the rules. An example easily comes to mind is a project in a top Architectural firm I worked with. They are the consultants in a top federal government project (the project is ongoing). Because of bugdet overrun and constraints, the client (FCDA)was looking for a way to cut cost. The contractor, also looking for a way to maximize profit pushed for the architect's fenestration design to be struck out, I dont know how it finally went before I left but I know that the contractor had political clout to get what they want. The architect had to resort to 'connection' in order to insist on the design as well as justifying it on 'functionality' basis?

Do you see what I mean? If things are done strictly professionally, they dont have the powers to stike it out. But in Nigeria things are not always done stictly professionally. Contractors like Julius Berger, have been known to use their political weight to make clients sack architects. I can give examples of projects that this has happened, except that I dont want to post it on this forum.

In smaller projects, where the architect may not be engaged for the supervision, it is easy for the contractor to do what he wants.

I  belong to the  noble profession!ARCHITECTURE  is a noble profession ,if  you want to  confirm this try  attend  site  meetings  of  a big  projects  comprising other the Architect  AND other  professionals or  ask  sincere builders,Engineers e.tc.Desse  and  other  posters are  right.
NIA  has  a long way to go!The  body  is the  culprit of  the  bane of young  architects  headache  ,i once  worked  with  an architectural  firm which  happened to be one of the leading  firms  in this  country considering  the  years of Establishment,profiles of  architects  in NIA and the  projects  on -going.The  firm  offers close  to nothing to a fresh  architects that i and  other colleagues  just have to leave.
I remember a colleague that  left for the film industry,he was the brain  behind one of Nigeria edifice of pride(I DON'T  WANT TO MENTION THE NAME)in Abuja.
I am currently  with an oil servicing  company  with a relatively  better pay  ,but  i cant wait  to return  to architectural practice!I N  architecture  the ogas  take  ALL.

Like Mahal rightly pointed out. I know a number of classmates and colleagues who left architecture for better pay in other sectors, hoping to come back later to architecture. I've not seen one person return back. Switching jobs sectors like that is not easy. The most some of them do is to land jobs from their contacts and give their colleagues to execute on their behalf (while they still take credit for it). If you love architecture that much, you would stick with it, complete you professional registration and become an 'Oga' someday rather than 'cutting out'.

There is nothing wrong with changing careers, though.

True talk.

Another true talk.

It depends,  I use all three. You ommitted Revit Architecture, which in my opinion is the 'end of discussion' in the autodesk family. Archicad is also as good as revit, but I use more of autodesk products.

Unlike AutoCAD which is a CAD software, ArchiCAD and Revit Architecture are BIM softwares (BIM means Building Information modelling). BIM should be your best bet since in the final analysis you would want make your life easier and generate architectural drawings, schedule and rendering automatically from a building model.

It seem every i know is in the process of Learning 3D max, haven't really come across anyone with "I know 3D max" tag.
I also have been learning 3D max for the past 5 years without much luck.
I guess i remain stuck with ArchiCAD 12 and Artlantis Studio 2.1

I must admit it is very technical but there is some tutorials in the net that you can download and they have helped me alot.
As I said, Ive tried Revit but Im a huge fan of Autocad 2d and Im not willing to let go.

Would sketch up do sumting like this?
I saw this presentation online