On Architects: the varied depictions and perceptions of everyone’s favorite designers

Architects often suffer from a case misrepresentation in the movies; although often not through malicious efforts of filmmakers. Rather, it is just that the typical in-and-outs of daily life for an architect really do not make for a captivating movie. Instead, as Nancy Levinson puts it in Tall Buildings, Tall Tales: on Architects in the Movies, architects are often used to backup the larger plots in the film; they are there to represent the stoic professional and earner of a posh lifestyle. Even when architects take center-stage, in films such as Fountainhead or Strangers When We Meet, they are shown in an idealized fashion (by the filmmakers, if not students and architects themselves). They often take on the role of the ‘army-man’ of the professional world: They are firm in their beliefs, captivating in their looks, inspiring in their intellectual prowess and are no less adept in the bedroom. Levinson makes little distinction between creative energy and sexual tenacity: “Great lovers make great buildings.”

“Hey baby, just wait ’till you see the detail I did for my building’s vapor barrier.”

Levinson contrasts this correlation with the opposite notion as well. In The Belly of an Architect, the leading designer is plagued by un-supportive colleagues and a wife who constantly belittles his design abilities. This lack of design prowess is matched by an affair on the part of his wife and betrayal by his colleagues. Thus, it seems (at least in the movies), that the surplus or lacking of creative talents equals corresponding successes in life. It seems that the movies only got it partially right: in My Architect, Louis Kahn’s son goes searching for clues about the history of his father. Kahn’s designs are some of the unsurpassed wonders of the 20th century, and his creative talent was matched with a wife and child (as well as 2 following affairs and 2 more children). It would appear the Kahn had the creativity and the virility to match. Yet at the same time he was beleaguered by debt and a general lack of success in the business sense. He died broke and alone in a train station bathroom. In Citizen Architect, Samuel “Sambo” Mockbee was a man of great creative talent, and was blessed with a wife and children, yet his architectural firm was more or less financially unsuccessful. Yet at the same time Mockbee was able turn his talents to the educational system, where his ‘Rural Studio’ has spawned an international movement of architectural humanitarianism.

Yet filmic representations of architects do not solely rely on the creativity-virility model. Levenson describes the eventual shift from a stoic professional – shrouded in mystery and heroism – to a superficial benefactor for a posh lifestyle, and even to the misunderstood artist whose visions were simply too complex and extraordinary for humanity to understand. In more recent films, films portray architects in a way that could be construed as outright criticism of their (our) lifestyle and ensuing designs. Yet on the whole, we are left with what Levinson describes as “the dream life or architects” in although what are mostly shallow representations of such a life, eerily mimic many of the feelings that we identify with today.