John C. Portman Jr.


John Calvin Portman Jr. was 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, and [Atlanta Atlanta Marriott Marquis|Marriott Marquis|Marriott] hotels. Portman's plans typically dealt with primitives in the forms of symmetrical squares and circles.
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Early life and career

Portman was born on December 4, 1924, in Walhalla, South Carolina, to John C. Portman Sr. and Edna Rochester Portman. He had five sisters. He graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1950. His firm completed the Merchandise Mart 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, which unlike its Atlanta counterpart, heavily emphasized pedestrian activity at street level.
The Hyatt Regency Atlanta, Portman's first atrium hotel, would lead to many more iconic hotels and multi-use complexes with atria, including the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, the New York Marriott Marquis, and the Renaissance Center in Detroit, whose central tower remained the tallest hotel in the Western Hemisphere until the completion of 1717 Broadway in 2013.
His signature work in China, the Shanghai Centre, was the first of many major projects in China and elsewhere in Asia. The 5-star hotel inside, The Portman Ritz-Carlton, Shanghai, was named after him.
In 2009, Portman's work was featured in a major exhibition at Atlanta's High Museum of Art.
Portman was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

Personal life and death

Portman married Joan "Jan" Newton. They had six children.
Portman died on December 29, 2017, aged 93, in Atlanta. Through his son Jarel, his daughter-in-law is actress Traylor Howard.

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

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

Awards and honors

Criticism

Portman was 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 some contemporary city planners are critical of such insular environments that "turn their back" on the city streets. For example, the New York Marriott Marquis with its 8-floor high lobby was praised as a "town square", but is now criticized by some for turning its back to Times Square. Nonetheless, 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. Also, he did, in fact, design buildings that heavily emphasized pedestrian activity at street level.