Roark’s second rule concerns the site. An architect must know the facts of the area on which he builds. The consequence of not doing so is best exemplified by a New York neighborhood built on a filled-in swampland. The architects did not take into consideration the marshy nature of the terrain; their foundations were neither deep nor sufficiently strong; the result has been a gradual sinking into the ooze. Today, the houses rest below the level of the street. A positive example of Roark’s point are those builders in San Francisco (on the San Andreas fault line) who construct their foundations on giant rollers, so that in case of earthquake the building can move in the direction of the earth’s shifting tectonic plates. This is an example of knowing the site. Copying designs of the past, Roark points out, does not address these issues.
Finally, Roark’s third rule concerns the purpose of the building, its function. Roark argues that no two buildings share the same purpose. “An airline terminal does not serve the same purpose as the Parthenon.” Form follows function, according to the modernist designers, which means that every feature of a building—down to the placement of the last light fixture and doorknob—must be designed to maximize the building’s purpose. A hospital, for example, deals with life-and-death emergencies. It requires wider corridors than most buildings so that the gurneys bearing the severely ill do not get clogged in pedestrian traffic. Again, the copying of prior designs would be inappropriate. The building’s nature must dictate its design. Roark argues repeatedly that “a building has integrity, like a man.” This is what he means. Integrity is to be true to oneself. A building must be a consistent whole, with every part designed to optimize its capacity to perform its function.
The independent thinker is like a scientist; he looks to nature, to the facts of reality, for truth. By contrast, a dependent person is like an unprincipled politician, looking to society, taking public opinion polls, in order to discover what he thinks is true. The dependent man and the independent man have differing concepts of truth; so the independent man is enabled to create new knowledge, whereas the dependent man is limited to merely copying the beliefs of others.
Ayn Rand provides an illustration of an independent man’s method of functioning at the end of Roark’s meeting with the Dean. Roark leaves the building knowing that there is an important difference between his way of thinking and the Dean’s. He knows the motivation of persons like himself; he does not understand men like the Dean. “There was an important secret involved somewhere in that question, he thought. There was a principle which he must discover.” Roark knows there are many persons like the Dean in society, and that he must learn to effectively deal with them. But when he steps outside, he stops. He sees the sunlight on the gray limestone of a stringcourse running along the wall of the building: “He forgot men, the Dean and the principle behind the Dean, which he wanted to discover. He thought only of how lovely the stone looked in the fragile light and of what he could have done with that stone.” Roark sees in his mind walls of limestone rising, cut by bands of glass permitting the rays of the sun to become part of the classroom.
Roark’s distinctive orientation is toward the stone and the sunlight, toward nature, toward facts, toward reality—and toward the structures he could build. He is not oriented toward society, toward men, or toward the beliefs of men. Though society and those who are a part of it are important—Roark must learn how to live with them—they fade to insignificance when he is faced with nature and her possibilities. Roark’s method of functioning is that which makes possible human survival. To build, to grow, to create require human beings to deal directly with the laws and facts of reality. The beliefs, opinions, and errors of society are an enormously secondary consideration. This theme is more-fully developed in the novel’s subsequent sections.
