• • There’s nothing wrong with buildings that just do their jobs 
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The Fountainhead movie  | In the 1949 film version of Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead, Howard Roark, the arrogantly idealistic anti-hero architect played by Gary Cooper, booms, “I don’t build in order to have clients; I have clients in order to build.” Alan Stanton and Paul Williams, founders of 2012 Stirling prize winning practice Stanton Williams, would respectfully disagree.™  

• • • Architects in film 
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The Fountainhead  |Image  | If ever there was a fictional architect whom most architects would secretly aspire to be, Howard Roark is it. In the eponymous Ayn Rand novel on which the film is based, Roark is loosely modelled on Frank Lloyd Wright. On celluloid he is brought to life by legendary screen idol Gary Cooper, who, along with James Stewart and Gregory Peck is probably the most virtuous character actor Hollywood has ever produced.  

 My digital life: David Exeter 

The Fountainhead  | [Q:] What was the last thing you bought online? [A:] The DVD of The Fountainhead, based on Ayn Rand’s book. Supplied from the USA because I couldn’t find it here in the UK.  

• The world after 9/11 

The Fountainhead  | Daniel Libeskind won the design competition for the new World Trade Center with his “needle skyscraper” design. This later became the Freedom Tower after Libeskind’s vision was redesigned by World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein and Skidmore Owings & Merrill, as the entire project started to resemble the narrative of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.  

• • Film season celebrates RIBA’s 175th anniversary 
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The Fountainhead  |Image  | The British Film Institute is hosting an architecture and film season to mark the 175th anniversary of the founding of the RIBA. [....] Among the highlights is The Fountainhead (1948), perhaps the most famous depiction of an architect – one whose Le Corbusier-like vision is of a future where skyscrapers rule.  

• • Foster accused of making ‘biggest mistake of his career’ in Bulgaria 
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The Fountainhead  | On Norman Foster‘s Black Sea Gardens project.
Gus Alexander wrote of the scheme on building.co.uk in January: “It reminds me of a very low-key resort called 'Monadnock' described in Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead', a preposterous tale of an architect reinventing architectural civilisation on his own by going back to first principles.”