Meanwhile, Peter Keating meets Dominique Francon, Guy Francon's daughter, and becomes deeply attracted to her. Roark spontaneously sketches his own original design over the proposal, and Heller hires him to design his home. When the strike ends, Heller asks Snyte to design a home for him. He manages to get a job designing in the modernist style for John Erik Snyte, but the building industry has been halted by a strike, which is supported by eminent figures such as Austen Heller and Ellsworth Toohey. But one day when Peter Keating is out of the office, Howard Roark turns down Guy Francon's request to design a building like one of Henry Cameron's, and Francon fires him. While Howard Roark works in the office, Peter Keating, who is now the chief designer, often comes to him secretly for help. Peter Keating becomes engaged to Toohey's niece, though he has not yet met Toohey, and he convinces Howard Roark to work for Guy Francon. Howard Roark's friendship with Henry Cameron develops quickly, but Cameron's firm is slowly crumbling.Ī new architecture critic, Ellsworth Toohey, publishes a book praising Guy Francon and damning Henry Cameron. He works his way up through the ranks, becoming ever closer to Guy Francon. Peter Keating immediately takes to the competitive and underhanded world that architecture has become. Peter Stanton is the valedictorian of his class, and he turns down a scholarship to the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris to take up a lucrative position with Guy Francon, the darling of the design world. He goes to New York to seek a position with the recently eminent but now reviled modernist designer Henry Cameron. Howard Roark is expelled for his refusal to complete exercises in classical design. At the outset of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, Howard Roark and Peter Keating depart from the Stanton Institute of Technology in very different ways.

Peter keating the fountainhead