Sounds like the role may be mislabelled if this is what he's doing routinely. I think the key question for me is whether he has responsibilities that are expected of him that he is unable to perform because he is doing this work instead.
Also, does your company have a separate formal architect role? Is it hard gated approval (this doesn't move without my stamp) or is he just keeping an eye on things?
The CTO seems publicly happy with him since the CTO leans on him more and more. He is doing his VP work during the day, coding for projects on the evening and weekends. Some services, he completely owns. He codes, QA, and deploys them without any other people's inputs.
The only person with an architect title is the VPs right hand man. They were hired at the same time (10+ years ago). The architect never questions the VPs design/decisions.
Yes, its hard gated. This project has been delayed 3 weeks already from starting because the VP has not have the time to approve the designs, etc.
Ok, that sounds like a disaster, and the 10 years part sounds like this was a temporary setup for a start-up that has outgrown it.
He's undermining the team's authority on their portion of the work, and it sounds like he's keeping the architect on a leash so tight that career growth is impossible. Additionally, the 3 week delay is inappropriate and evidence that he needs to butt out and learn to delegate.
As there's support from above on this, it sounds like it's unlikely to change until something goes badly wrong, sadly.
Also, does your company have a separate formal architect role? Is it hard gated approval (this doesn't move without my stamp) or is he just keeping an eye on things?