I started reading Fountainhead a few decades ago. In the process I fell in love with architecture. However, I never did manage to finish it. Now was the time to finally make it through. It was worth it. The book has a strong reputation among the more right-leaning crowd. There are a few libertarian soliloquies. However, there is plenty from the other sides also.
Fountainhead focuses on the lives of two architects: Howard Roark and Peter Keating. Roark has strong idealistic principles. He feels that architecture is a special art and that an architect is bound to idealistic principles. He will not sacrifice these principles for any whims of those commissioning his work. Because of this, he is kicked out of architecture school. However, he does have great talent and is able to get some jobs, though his principles continue to cause him trouble. Eventually, he joins with a senior modernist architect (who is now out of favor). They do some limited great work together. Roark goes out on his own and gets some commissions from people who agree with his vision. However, he is often ridiculed. When his firm fails, he is perfectly fine doing manual labor. (Maybe this is what made the book so appealing when working a manual labor job.)
Keating is a friend of Roark from the school days who goes on the opposite path. He does not have the skills of Roark, yet he is willing to schmooze and follow the rules. He graduates from school. He gets a good job. He rises to heights in the architecture profession. He marries a beautiful woman. Along the way he attempts to attract Roark to his path on numerous times. Roark works for his company, yet is turned away. A few times Roark helps Keating on his designs, essentially designing buildings that Keating takes credit for. Roark is fine with this. Keating, however, is much more challenged by Roark.
Dominique Francon is the woman. She is perhaps the most complex. She falls in love with Roark, the anonymous laborer. They are clandestine lovers while at the same time she is complicit in efforts to ruin Roark's career. He is greatly turned on by him, but can't find any way in which she can have any strength in the relationship. She later married Peter Keating. She is.a prize wife, but they have a passionless relationship (in spite of her giving in to his desires.) She divorces him and then is married to a newspaper magnate. This is a more challenging and fulfilling relationship. However, both of them are admirers of Roark and his talents and idealism.
Ellsworth Toohey is the architecture critic who despises Roark. He helps bring up other architects, such as Keating, only to brush them aside later. He attempts to speak "for the people", but is really just spattering off his own beliefs. He goes through elaborate schemes to bring him down. He encourages a wealthy man to have Roark design a "temple for humanity", then criticizes the structure, ruining Roark and his firm.
It feels that all the other characters are just there to push Roark in one direction or the other. However, he will just not move. He seems to have a case of high functioning autism. He has great skill. He cares that the buildings are right. He does not really care about people or the praise of men. He would much rather have a building built "right" than have credit for it. He is also drawn towards other artists with artwork that he admires. His architectural ideals sometimes are in line with those of society, but more often they are out of step. He has relationships with other people, but seems to have few tight binds. He is perfectly willing to forgive people for atrocious wrongs without holding any grudge. (He remained close to both people who had married the only woman he was close to.) The one thing that he cannot stand is violation of his art. He destroys a building that had been modified from his plan.
While the book is often held up as a libertarian magnum opus, it can be easily be adapted by the left. Even somebody like Greta Thunberg has some Roark in her. There is a strong unwavering passion. There is little concern for what others say or do. The work is the joy. Many musicians and other artists are focussing on their art today. They refuse to "sell out" and become a Keating. They would much rather stay true like Roark. If fame comes, so be it. They will take it, but won't let it change them.
Great human environments are not conceived in one head and pushed out of a factory. They evolve like other life forms. Cities and buildings follow a number of patterns. Different designs are common in different parts of the world. These are "patterns" but not modules. The patterns are adapted to the surroundings and environment to help fulfill human needs. For a building to remain timeless, the architect must be egoless. Otherwise, the building will represent the desires of the designer rather than the people.
There are many things in our built environment that we just take for granted. For example, stop signs. Why are they octagons? And why red? Turns out somebody thought that the number of edges was an indication of degree of danger. And red seemed like a good color for stop.