I enjoy creating and spreading knowledgeable content for everyone around the world and try my best not to leave even the smallest of mistakes go unnoticed.
Paul Goldberger, Philip Johnson, Yukio Futagawa, Gina Portman
John Calvin Portman Jr. (born December 4, 1924; Walhalla, South Carolina) is an American neofuturistic architect and real estate developer widely known for popularizing hotels and office buildings with multi-storied interior atria. Portman also had a particularly large impact on the cityscape of his hometown of Atlanta, with the Peachtree Center complex serving as downtown's business and tourism anchor from the 1970s onward. The Peachtree Center area includes Portman-designed Hyatt, Westin, Mandarin Oriental, and Marriott hotels. Portman's plans typically deal with primitives in the forms of symmetrical squares and circles.
Portman graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1950. His firm completed the Merchandise Mart (now AmericasMart) in downtown Atlanta in 1961. The multi-block Peachtree Center was begun in 1965 and would expand to become the main center of hotel and office space in Downtown Atlanta, taking over from the Five Points area just to the south. Portman would develop a similar multiblock complex at San Francisco's Embarcadero Center (1970s), which unlike its Atlanta counterpart, heavily emphasized pedestrian activity at street level.
Portman is praised for his "cinematic" interiors artfully relating interior space and elements to the individual. In the 1960s and 1970s the placement of such buildings in America's decaying downtowns was considered salvation of the city centers, but contemporary city planning is highly critical of such insular environments that "turn their back" on the city streets. For example, the New York Marriott Marquis with its 8th-floor lobby once praised as a "town square", is now criticized for turning its back to Times Square — but at the time the hotel was built, due to the still-seedy character of Times Square, Portman's style of inwardly-oriented spaces made logical sense.
Portfolio
in chronological order by first listed completion date — for complexes, by completion date of first building in complex
An asterisk (*) following a listing indicates a work done in partnership with H. Griffith Edwards.
1960s
AmericasMart (formerly the Atlanta Market Center), Atlanta
AmericasMart 1 (also known as the Merchandise Mart), 1961*
AmericasMart 2 (also known as the Gift Mart), 1992
AmericasMart 2 West, 2008
AmericasMart 3 (also known as the Apparel Mart), 1979
Atlanta Decorative Arts Center (ADAC), Peachtree Hills, Atlanta, 1961
Cary Reynolds Elementary (formerly Sequoyah Elementary and Northwoods Area Elementary before that), 1961
Sequoyah Middle School (formerly Sequoyah High School), 1963
230 Peachtree Building (formerly the Peachtree Center Tower), Atlanta, 1965*