QUESTION No. 3:
WHAT KIND OF LIFE PARTNERS DO ARCHITECTS MAKE?
Fine Print: This column does not, nor does it claim to, offer advice to the lovelorn. If you require such assistance, it is recommended that you consult your local clergy, bartender, BFF or marriage architect.
If you read the fine print (Note: always read the fine print) you may have stumbled over marriage architect. Such things exist.
Q: What would a marriage architect do?
A: At a guess, as the OED suggests (See Question 2b), there would be some comprehensive planning, contriving and devising involved. Also, as one marriage architect advertises online, there would be extensive use of digital wizardry.
Dear Marriage Architect,
I’m an architect and I’m thinking of getting married. Do you think this is a good idea? My fiancé’s friends are all telling him that architects are workaholics who go to the office early, come home late, and don’t make much money. This is sort of true, but I think I also have redeeming qualities.
His parents don’t know any actual architects, so they have been filling his head with ridiculous caricatures of architects from old TV shows, like The Brady Bunch, Family Ties and Mr. Ed: all solid family types, but incredibly humdrum and also detached from reality. (They never seemed to do any work at all. How did they feed their families?) Then there was architect Charlie Banks in the soap opera One Life to Live, year after year, falling off the wagon and into bed with someone who wasn’t his wife. This is all bad PR for me and the profession in general.
And forget about George Costanza’s pipe-dream architect in Seinfeld, which is just another cardboard cut-out.
And, do I need to mention that – with the conspicuous exception of Elyse Keaton, in Family Ties – they’re all men.
More up-to-date TV architects like Ted Mosby in How I Met Your Mother don’t help the cause either. Ted is chronically broke, terminally boring, self-centred and obsessed with trivialities. Why aren’t architects ever portrayed doing heroic things like TV doctors and cops do. On TV, even lawyers are more thrilling. How can I bring my boyfriend around? Your advice would be much appreciated. I am currently
Stuck in the Planning Phase.
The Marriage Architect Responds
Dear Stuck,
Thanks for reaching out. It’s good to question your decisions. After all, this is what architects are trained to do. But I think your boyfriend would get a more complete picture, and a more positive one, if he ignored TV architects, as well as his friends and family, and met some actual architects.
Failing that, why not look at movie architects instead. In the movies, an architect is less of a background know-it-all and more of an active participant. In the movies, you find out what personality traits screenwriters (hence the general public) believe architects have. To put it more plainly: What kind of marriage partner do most people believe that an architect would make? The news is much better.
First of all, they aren’t as frightening as Gary Cooper in The Fountainhead. I’m thinking more of Jon Stewart in Playing by Heart and Keanu Reeves in The Lake House. In these two films, the architect’s challenge is to redeem a broken relationship, and in both cases, they come through, proving that love is more important than mere architecture. Also, in the Lake House, you get to see Keanu actually working at a drafting board (this is 15 years ago), and Christopher Plummer playing a brilliant FLW clone, which is worth the price of admission alone.
In a few movies, the architect performs heroic deeds in order to preserve the integrity of the family. Click is a good example, the architect played by Adam Sandler is an ambitious, self-absorbed, child-neglecting workaholic who tumbles into a dream sequence where his base instincts for fame and wealth run riot. So far your boyfriend’s information is accurate. But the architect becomes a small-h hero when he discovers – almost too late – that a loving family is more valuable than a shallow successful career.
A favourite theme of architect movies is what you might call “The Architect, Dependable but Unfaithful.” I can think of four films, and there are many more, in which the architect turns out to be a low-down cheat. Again, things aren’t looking good. But the adultery serves as a teaching moment (who but a resourceful architect could pull that off?) and the architect’s family is strengthened by the event. In Breaking and Entering (Jude Law), The Last Kiss (Zach Braff), It Must be Love (Ted Danson) and Click, again (Adam Sandler), the architect is shown to have enough strength of character to right the wrong and ultimately repair the family.
These seem like good qualities to me. My invoice is enclosed.
Marriage Architect
The Architect poses another question
Dear Marriage Architect, again,
Sorry, but there’s still the Louis Kahn thing. He’s a really famous architect who did incredible work. But he had three separate families at the same time, and his son made a movie about it. This doesn’t seem like a good selling point. How do I get around this?
Still Planning
But the marriage architect is on top of it
Dear Still,
I understand your concern and empathize completely. But I think you’re misreading the trigamy situation. And perhaps you’re being just a bit judgmental.
Louis Kahn was indeed very famous and accomplished, partly because he never did ordinary things, in work or personal life. And, as you must know, he was known to be exceptionally considerate. For example, he admits to sometimes talking to his building materials and asking them what they want to be. His ability to run three households at one time, on top of everything else, really shows resourcefulness, planning skill and an exceptional commitment to family – things that architects are famous for.
Getting back to movies and TV again, Louis Kahn’s son Nathaniel made the film My Architect, in order to understand and explain his dad’s behaviour, and definitely not to condemn it. In the same year the film was made, 2003, Kahn’s unique matrimonial arrangements were fictionalized in an episode (“Undaunted Mettle”) of the TV series Law and Order: Criminal Intent. The story was rooted in a fantastical premise where the trigamist architect is murdered by one of his admiring employees. This actually happened to an architect, but not Louis Kahn, and that’s another story, which we’ll come back to in a future question.
I hope this helps you to reach some resolution. I think your boyfriend should look at all the facts – especially the fictitious ones – before he takes the plunge. Good luck.
Marriage Architect
Marriage as Architecture
Trigamy aside, architecture may be an ideal analog for marriage. Both jobs aim for similar results: to build something lasting, with optimism, idealism and goodwill. In marriage, as in architecture, there’s a design program (marriage vows), a contract (a pre-nup) and a building permit (marriage licence), followed by a construction process (marriage itself). Then, like a building, there’s a foundation, a structure, a protective envelope, a harmonious balance, a continuous process of maintenance and renewal, and a gradual, gentle aging.
Actually, maybe scratch that last point. Statistics Canada (2018) tells us that a single detached house in Canada is expected to last 65 years. The same source (2008) gives the average lifespan of a Canadian marriage as 13.7 years – roughly the life expectancy of a built-up tar-and-gravel roof.
Nonetheless, there are enough similarities between architecture and marriage that it’s worth probing a little deeper. Who better to ask about marriage than an architect … or better yet, two architects married to each other?
Architectural Spouses in the Real World
It’s not uncommon for professionals to intermarry. Provided there is no blood relationship involved, there is no stigma attached. If you are considering such a union, you might consult a Lifestyle Architect, a Relationship Architect or a Decision Architect (these are also real things). On the other hand, although I hesitate to mention it, in the unlikely event that a blood relationship does exist, you can always consult a Sin Architect (also a real thing, but you’re on your own here – the description on the website is more confusing than helpful).
Inter-architect marriage is certainly not unusual – there are enough illustrious architectural couples that we might reasonably conclude there is some benefit to this arrangement. For this essay, I interviewed Sean and Amanda, two architects married to each other, who both feel that in their case at least, there are many positives, and that the metaphor of marriage as a work of architecture is not at all far-fetched. In the firm where they worked, met, and fell in love, at the time they got engaged, there were no fewer than five other architect-architect couples. It’s not that the firm actively encouraged its staff to bond matrimonially, but these things happen, and in many ways, marital and professional teamwork can be mutually reinforcing.
Amanda referred to architecture as a “community-based team sport”: all parts of the process involve the smooth interaction of many people – architects and others, not unlike a family – working toward a common goal.
Modern practice almost always relies on a collaborative model, where everything, even the construction drawings, show the work of many contributors with differing skills. Yet, only a few decades ago, the prevailing image of the architect was as lone, enlightened genius and/or omniscient master builder. The old Howard Roark Fountainhead version lives on because many people still cherish that image. And architects are not blameless, either. As Atkins and Simpson put it, “who people think we are is greatly determined by who we lead them to believe we are.”
It’s fair to say that the tortured mastermind doesn’t make an ideal marriage candidate in most circumstances. When it comes to matrimony, collaborators make the best partners. There are so many things to work out: finances, timetables, schedules, living environment, social interactions. And then there’s the architecture itself: home selection, renovations, furniture choices, landscaping, maintenance, etc. Amanda suggested that when two minds with different preferences but similar approaches collaborate on a problem, whether it’s cleaning the basement or designing an office tower, the solution is likely to be better than either mind could conjure independently. Sean referred to the allocation of responsibilities as a sort of Venn diagram in which the greater volume is occupied by the overlap area, but with the Sean-only and Amanda-only parts ready to merge into the middle when needed.
There are many advantages to the architect-architect living arrangement. In addition to those mentioned above, there is the fact that each partner sympathizes with the other’s professional triumphs and frustrations. Arguments, if they occur, are more likely to involve details than big-picture items. Further to that, both partners may share a circle of friends who are equally understanding and supportive.
In another example, a recent New York Times article describes an architectural couple that decided to take up residence on a small island with no infrastructure. Building materials arrive by boat; electricity comes from solar panels, but originally from propane tanks and a 12-volt battery. For architects, the attraction to off-the-grid living is easy to understand, if not embrace: It presents the necessity for ingenuity, daily hands-on activity, and the sense of independence, in which both partners can share. As Amanda told me, “Architects don’t just have an idea,” they understand all of the possibilities and limitations and work the idea through together.
Sean and Amanda prefer big-city living because, for them, architecture is a social occupation. This raises one of the disadvantages of the two-architect family: it can be expensive. Housing costs are highest in the city. Add to this the problem of furnishings: Because architects are aware of the vast range of domestic products on the market, they tend to favour the newest and the nicest designer fittings and fixtures. This turns out to be expensive too.
All things considered, the benefits of marrying an architect, at least if you are also an architect, seem to far outweigh the disadvantages, notwithstanding the financially draining lifestyle.
Getting back to the original question, let’s say you’re not an architect, but you’re thinking of marrying one. Is this wise? Well, the normal rules of selection are bound to apply. And don’t forget that architects, like everyone else, come in many varieties. A marriage architect might be able to help with this.