Who’s Your Favorite Architect?

Photo Credit: Creative Commons

There is a new exhibit at MoMA in New York on the less notable works of Frank Lloyd Wright, one of America’s most notable architects. Frank Lloyd Wright was a larger than life architect who reinvented himself several times. Also, some claim, he was the inspiration for Howard Roark of The Fountain Head fame, you know, the other Ayn Rand book. How is it that a man who died at 91 in 1959 is still one of the best know architects by the general public? How did he become so famous? Was his ego so much bigger than architects of today?

When I started architecture school, family and non-architects would ask me ‘who was my favorite architect?’ and the expectation was I would say FLW. Frankly, I was never a big fan of FLW. This was confirmed on a visit to Taliesin West, where I had to bend over to enter the building only to find I couldn’t stand up straight in the vestibule, after all I am 6 foot 3 inches tall! However, if I mentioned any other architects to my friends, my list of European heroes at the time, the response was usually ‘Who?’ I think, to an extent, this may still be true today. The average person on the street if asked to name a famous architect would struggle and FLW may still come up. Frank Gehry is another possibility – he appeared in an episode of The Simpson’s, turning Marge’s crumpled letter into a design for a concert hall in Springfield. If you haven’t seen the Seven-Beer Snitch episode you should check it out.

How about the name recognition of Michael Graves, which occurs primarily because of his tea pot and other decorative arts? Maybe Zaha Hadid is the next biggest name the public might recognize. She designed some notable and unusual buildings around the world and was the first woman architect to win the Pritzker Prize, but she unfortunately passed away recently. Other than a hand full of architects, most of which are no longer with us, who else has made it into the public psyche? Try and ask some of your non-architect friends and see who they name.

Let us, for a moment, think about major public buildings like blockbuster movies. When it comes to movies, we can name many actors who have starred in recent major motion pictures. What about your favorite TV shows, if that is still a thing, who are your favorite stars? But who designed the new World Trade Center? Or the new Apple Building that can be seen from space? How about the new Whitney Museum in New York, or the National Museum of African American History and Culture in D.C.? Most non-architects probably have no idea and even some architects would struggle. So, what is the problem here?

What is it about the obscurity of our profession? Bad PR? Are we just not that interesting? Are we more like dentists than doctors and lawyers – a necessary evil? Look at our popular culture – there are lots of TV shows about doctors, lawyers, cops, detectives and spies.  We, as a profession, have not been completely absent from TV. Back in the 80’s there was Elyse Keaton in Family Ties, Michael J. Fox’s mom. Then in the 70’s we had Mike Brady of The Brady Bunch. All the way back to the 60’s, we had Mr. Ed. He was a talking horse whose owner, Wilbur Post, was an architect and the straight man. Interestingly, these characters were all single practitioners working out of their houses, is that the typical architect?

Photo Credit: BBC News

Then there are the movies. Who can forget Paul Newman in the Towering Inferno (1974)? Then again, maybe we should. We had Gary Cooper as Howard Roark, yes, they made a film adaptation of The Fountainhead and it is worth watching and spoiler alert: he blows up the building in the end (1949). On the comedy side, we had John Cleese as Mr. Wiggan in Monty Python’s ‘Architect sketch’ complete with swirling knives (1970). We even had Henry Fonda playing the bleeding heart architect in 12 Angry Men (1957). There are probably more, but these are the architects in popular culture that stuck with me. In the end, these are not a particularly up lifting testament to our profession.

Maybe we need to get with the times. I have a couple of ideas for TV shows to get us back in front of the general public. How about a dramatic show about ‘Doctor AIA’, an architect who runs around curing sick building syndrome every week, finding unbelievable problems with rare molds or off gassing materials from exotic places and, of course, saving lots of lives. Maybe Hugh Laurie could play the part? What about a sitcom with Bob Newhart playing an architect in Vermont with three interns called Larry, Daryl and Daryl. High jinx’s in rural Vermont doing house renovations where everything goes wrong. Or maybe a reality TV show, ‘Titanium Architect’, where real architects team up to do fake design competitions over the course of a single day and have to submit to a final jury to see who goes onto next week’s challenge.

All a bit too ridiculous? Probably, but if you had been given the task of creating a movie or TV show about an architect that actually shows what it is like to work in our profession, what would it be? And would anyone want to see it? What would it take to create an architect, even if fictitious, that would have public recognition? Let’s have a little fun, please submit your ideas below and if I’ve missed any notable examples of movie or TV architects add it to the comments section.