Construction of an Architect – MAS CONTEXT
The Architect, a title so synonymous with a certain cultural clique of filmmaking that there were no less than three movies released within the last decade that donned the professional title. While the later films might be accused of lifting the title, the combined Rotten Tomatoes score of a paltry eleven percent for all three films may suggest that each film was simply too inconsequential to make an impact on the others.1 The commonalities of these movies did not end at their titles and low ratings. Above all, they documented the character of the architect in the eyes of the public. While endeavoring to turbo-charge the character of the architect with all the beauty of Hollywood comedic appeal or dramatic effect, they failed to present anything more than stereotypical representations—architects devoid of contact with the greater society and cocooned inside personal endeavor. Although the formula may not always yield filmic gold, their presence on screen does bring up the question of the character of the architect and its relevance to the discipline.
The construction of the architect character is something of great specificity, outlining truths beyond the well-oiled stereotypes in these recent films. The image of the architect as presented to us on screens, in paintings, and in books is very much a formulation, or system, in and of itself. Characters are often disposed to have an existing structure—held up by the personalities and individual emotional traits that represent a continuous pendulum between artistic expression and business commercialism—and are covered with layers of allegory—built-up from accessories and equipment that symbolize the profession and the work undertaken. The characters we see in different forms of representation are indeed fabricated in the image of the architect, but an image that is formed by the public perception of the discipline’s emotional generalities and its symbolic objects—a duality encompassed by the categorization of the personal and the elemental architect character.
