When acclaimed architect and developer John Portman passed away, a wave of tributes celebrated his distinctive architectural style. Known for soaring atria, dazzling glass elevators, and revolving restaurants, Portman’s creations were undeniably iconic. While posthumous praise is customary, the recent reassessment of John Portman’s architectural legacy, particularly its positive spin, warrants a critical examination. Some have even suggested Portman’s projects spurred downtown revitalization, a claim that overlooks the complex reality of urban development and the actual impact of his designs.
Having witnessed John Portman’s rise to prominence in the architectural landscape, a historical perspective is essential. In the 1970s, John Portman emerged as an architectural prodigy. He conceptualized and, in some cases, developed sprawling hotel, office, and retail complexes in major cities like Atlanta (Hyatt Regency and Peachtree Center), San Francisco (Hyatt Regency/Embarcadero Center), Chicago (O’Hare Airport), Los Angeles (Bonaventure Hotel), and Detroit (Renaissance Center). Desperate for investment, struggling cities embraced Portman, eager for any developer willing to build downtown. In an era lacking architectural innovation, Portman’s concepts initially appeared groundbreaking. He commendably confronted urban challenges when many had written off city centers, particularly downtown areas, as irredeemable. Atlanta, his home city, stood out as a burgeoning urban success story, with Portman considered a key figure in its ascent.
However, much like the suburban malls of the same period, these inward-looking developments attempted to encapsulate within protective walls the very essence of thriving urban centers. While many of John Portman’s projects were erected during periods of urban decline, ostensibly as catalysts for urban renewal, they often hindered, rather than helped, the potential for genuine revitalization. In cities like Detroit, as explored further in upcoming analyses, Portman’s Renaissance Center arguably cemented urban stagnation. Portman’s massive structures functioned as isolated islands, drawing vitality from the surrounding city, mirroring how suburban shopping centers drained life from within city limits. They resembled casinos: self-contained environments substituting architectural spectacle for authentic urban vibrancy. Their design objective was to draw people away from the street and keep them confined within.
The Portman approach dictated a top-down design ethos, leaving little room for organic urban evolution. Consequently, these projects mirrored the impersonal nature of a standardized development formula, lacking local character despite their undeniable visual impact. They became sanitized, exclusionary packages that could be placed in “Any City, U.S.A.” And the external appearance was only the beginning of the issue.
The interior of John Portman’s designs presented equal challenges. As atrium-centric design became increasingly prevalent in the 1970s, discerning observers recognized a sense of disorientation and artifice beneath the surface glamour. Navigating the intricate public and retail spaces within Portman-designed developments often proved more perplexing than understanding the most complex cities. Getting lost inside a Portman hotel became almost a quintessential urban experience for years. As early as 1982, columnist George F. Will, writing in The Washington Post, satirized this in an article titled “The Great American Lobby Crisis,” highlighting the navigational difficulties:
“Indications of decadence are rife, but nowhere more so than in modern hotel lobbies. In such lobbies it is possible to suffer vertigo as a result of the architecture and décor…Atlanta’s Peachtree Plaza has a lobby that Lewis and Clark could not have found their way across.”
Over subsequent years, costly modifications were implemented in many of these buildings, adjustments that would have been unnecessary had the original designs been conceived to integrate seamlessly with their urban contexts.
Distinctive hotel and office lobbies have a rich and respected history. Historically, they were designed as welcoming extensions of urban life, working in harmony with the street rather than in opposition to it, as Portman’s interiors often did. Even more critically, Portman’s dramatic atria are increasingly questionable today due to the substantial energy demands required to heat and cool these expansive interior volumes. In the face of pressing global environmental challenges, such designs border on environmental irresponsibility.
However, in the 1970s and 80s, the message conveyed by John Portman’s architecture was unambiguous: cities were failing; the suburban lifestyle and enclosed malls represented the future; traditional cities, with their street-level commerce and pedestrian-friendly environments, were relics of the past. The prevailing expert opinion asserted that this inward-looking approach was the only viable strategy to attract people back to downtown areas. Yet, vibrant examples like Pike Place Market in Seattle, Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, and the thriving green markets of New York City presented a different narrative.
In the mid-1970s, defying expert predictions, Quincy Market opened in Boston. To the astonishment of the same experts, enormous crowds flocked to it, drawn to walk its cobblestone streets, browse the predominantly small businesses and unique pushcarts, relax at outdoor cafes, and engage in the simple pleasures of eating, drinking, and people-watching. This groundbreaking project demonstrated that cities could indeed revive by embracing genuinely urban approaches.
Quincy Market and similar projects across the nation achieved precisely what Portman’s projects failed to do. They fostered continuous, organic evolution, allowing new concepts to mature, accommodating the individualistic expressions of tenant businesses, and supporting the time-honored urban phenomenon of pushcarts serving as incubators for new businesses that might eventually occupy storefronts. It was traditional urbanism, the very approach that Portman’s advocates seemed to fear. However, it sparked genuine urban regeneration in adjacent neighborhoods, where new businesses, restaurants, and restored historic residential buildings emerged organically and incrementally.
Quincy Market in Boston showcases a pedestrian-friendly, vibrant urban space, contrasting with John Portman's inward-focused architectural designs.
The contrast between Portman and Quincy Market highlights the fundamentally anti-urban nature of the former. Both emerged during the same period, but only one fostered authentic revitalization through an ecological approach, where the whole derives strength from the interconnectedness of its parts. The distinction is illuminating: one approach responds to its site and context, while the other creates its own isolated world; one is intimate and personal, the other is a product of a standardized formula; one embraces local distinctiveness, the other eliminates it entirely; one welcomes the city, the other seems to fear it. These contrasting approaches encapsulate the two extremes of an era when the resurgence of cities was still considered improbable—at least by the so-called experts.
Regrettably, Quincy Market also became a formula replicated in numerous locations, a more urbanized mall concept, yet still singularly developed, owned, and controlled—everything that a genuine urban neighborhood is not. Despite its shortcomings, Quincy Market ignited renewed interest in harmonizing the new with the old, reinforcing pedestrian life, and recognizing the significant impact of small-scale changes. John Portman’s designs could not claim similar merits. As is often overlooked when evaluating architectural significance, buildings are not merely standalone sculptures; they profoundly shape the urban fabric around them and can determine the vitality or demise of a downtown area. This critical urban impact will be further explored next week in a piece focusing on Detroit and the legacy of John Portman’s Renaissance Center.
