In Rand's "Fountainhead," the hero architect designs a "Temple of the Human Spirit" for what turns out to be a fraudulent client. The ideal was to build a place of reverence which had nothing to do with any religion, and which celebrated human greatness and exaltation. Inside, on a central pedestal, was the statue of the woman standing at rapt attention, which I have been working on in previous posts.
In the book, the Temple is destroyed by vicious intellectuals and the hateful public. I decided to design it myself, in a virtual world where even fictional hate cannot reach it.
I am not an architect though I am constantly thinking about and drawing buildings of any sort. The obvious reference point for the Temple's architecture is Frank Lloyd Wright, who is the model (though he denied it) for Rand's hero.
The central part of this structure is the large high temple space with the statue in it. The two wings on either side would be a small concert/lecture hall, a library, and some meeting and study rooms. I'm not entirely satisfied with this design because of the rather monotonous lineup of windows in the two wings, but this is only a sketch.
In conceiving this Temple I realized that people would use it for events like (secular) weddings or other gatherings, rather than just sitting quietly in front of the image of perfection. But I also realized that (unlike the hateful crowd Rand wrote about) many people would come to think of the exalted female as a Goddess, and might lay flowers or devotional objects at her sculpted feet. Rand would never approve of that.
