You never expect celebrities to costume up from Aisle 9 at Walgreens... and yet here are Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt.Casting agents for the show have been approaching architectural firms across the country "searching for a 27- to 33-year-old single, handsome, successful, charismatic guy who would like to be whisked away to an exotic, tropical location dating 25 beautiful girls.
"But with a pool of architects - notoriously cheap, arrogant and generally terrible dates, if not altogether gay - as bait, will gals actually bite? It's a move that gives even some architects a good laugh.
On the Gutter, a Web site and online message board for architects, the "Bachelor" posting has elicited these cracks:
"Most bachelor architects would be on 'Brokeback Bachelor,'" a reference to the many gay men in the field.
"I can't wait for the episode where his date spends the whole night in his studio, while he finishes hot-gluing a chip-board model," because architects are known to put in long hours agonizing over minute details.
"After gluing the model all night, wait till she has to pay for dinner." After years of expensive graduate programs, few architects are known for making big bucks, or being particularly generous with what they do make. Some New York women'sromantic experiences with architects only bolster such stereotypes. "I went on a couple of dates with an architect I met online," recalls Eve*, a 36-year-old social worker from Brooklyn. "He was gay and either didn't know it, or didn't want to be. He was so effeminate, I was shocked that he didn't know how gay he was."
Janice*, 42, a writer in the Flatiron District, had a similar experience. "I dated an architect who turned out to be gay, in the full belief that he wasstraight. "I was so infatuated with the guy, I didn't pick up on anything. It turned out he had a boyfriend. Dating me was sort of a novelty for him."
But single, straight architect Eric Clough, a partner in 212 Box, a Tribeca-based architectural firm, warns not to judge a book by its cover. "Some people may get the wrong idea, because a lot of male architects are metrosexuals, not gay," he says. "I don't know what the stats are in the profession. I do know a lot of gay designers, but I know a lot of straight ones, too." Clough at least admits to being very unavailable because of his work. "It's not easy to date, though I do meet a lot of women — mostly married," he says. "I have a tendency to have a lot of crushes on my clients, because you go straight into a sort of intimate relationship with them. But it's true that architecture as a profession does take a lot of time out of your personal life, especially when you have your own business."
That's the reason Sophie*, a 27-year-old medical researcher on the upper West Side, avoids dating architects after working at a big Manhattan firm. "If you were to date an architect, you probably wouldn't ever see him in daylight," she says. "On an average day I worked 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., and everyone's relationships seemed to be suffering. On days just before major deadlines, it wasn't uncommon for them to work through the night, or even two or three nights straight. Some of the architects at the firm had memberships at the 24-hour gym nearby, so they'd have a place to shower when they worked straight through. "One guy resorted to taking dinner breaks to see his girlfriend," Sophie recalls. "He'd work until 7 p.m. or so, leave for an hour to meet her for dinner, and then come back to work for another several hours before he went home."
Sarah*, herself a landscape architect, 38, of the upper West Head, had a different complaint about the two architects she dated: arrogance. "The first one I dated when I went to Cornell," she says with a cringe. "That one took himself very seriously. Everything he saw was fodder for sketching in this little notebook he carried around -like, 'Oh, wait, look at that cardboard box over there.' He had very stuck-up opinions about what was art and what wasn't, what books I should and shouldn't have." Though the experience wasn't enough to scare her off architects for good, a second one sure was. "He also had that reading-list recommendation thing - all the weighty tomes of architecture," she recalls. And he wasn't terribly romantic. "On our first date, we went to a construction site and took pictures of pipes. And he was really cheap. When I went to see him after being away for a few weeks, he made me dinner: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich."
None of this comes as a surprise to Wendy Straker, author of "Men at Work: A Job-by-Job Search for Mr. Right" (Polkadot Press). "Architects are a great balance between the artist and the suit," she says. "They're visionaries who know how to plan. But the risk of dating an architect is that they're extremely set in their ways. They think they know what's best for you and that includes everything from which direction your couch should face to where you should hang that new painting."
Still, despite all these downsides, there's an undeniable sexiness to the field that reels women in. Think of Gary Cooper as Harold Roark in Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead," an idealistic architect who refuses to compromise his principles and thus sweeps Patricia Neal's married Dominique Francon off her feet.
Then there's Seinfeld's George Costanza, who lied about being an architect to impress women, as does Matt Dillon's character in the Farrelly brothers' comedy "There's Something About Mary."
"We've had a lot of responses from really good-looking, charismatic, sexy guys in that field," reports Robyn Cass, casting director for "The Bachelor." She said the show is considering men in a few other fields as well. "We think an architect would be amazing on the show. It just seems like a really interesting profession. Regardless of profession, though, we're just going to pick the best bachelor in the country."
Straker's not sure an architect would be the best choice. "Architects tend to be introverted thinkers who would rather stay home to look at floor plans and elevations than wine and dine you at the latest hot spot," she says.
If ABC goes with an architect, Straker says, "It will be interesting to see how this guy captivates a roomful of women. He might just be in over his head."
The very busy, and so very unavailable, Clough argues otherwise. "I definitely feel that
architects make good boyfriends and husbands," he attests. "We're esthetically aware and gifted. And we're especially good with our hands."
* Names have been changed at the subjects' request.
"You're in Paris and you're part of this incredible experience, this fantasy world, and then suddenly you come back to Nashville, and living in the same city I think we thought was going to be a great thing, but instead, you're forced to pretend you don't know someone, for essentially the last four months," the 33-year-old Vanderbilt Medical Center emergency room doctor continued. "The reality is that we were in this fantasy world. And now that we're back in Nashville, over time when you're not allowed to see someone, you grow apart."
