A Legacy Built to Last
By: Ann W. Hoevel, STC 98
When people describe John Portman, they need to use a lot of commas.
He was an architect, a developer, a city planner, an artist, a futurist, and—most of all—a risk-taker. The accomplishments of one of Georgia Tech’s most famous alumni resonate with the diverse educational philosophy that the Institute has held for many decades.
Portman, who died Dec. 29, 2017, at the age of 93, had a multidisciplinary approach to the built environment. He had a habit of combining expertise in industries that were quite different, in ways that no one before him thought about. He epitomized a way of thinking that merged the human experience with nature, neighborhoods and cities. He was constantly curious. He was willing to operate contrary to the normal pattern. He persevered and evolved in the face of criticism.
As home to some of the most out-of-the-box thinkers, the Institute and specifically the College of Design is devoted to those ideals.
An Entrepreneurial Architect
Portman grew up and went to school in Atlanta. His entrepreneurial spirit was obvious as a young child—his first “franchise plan” was buying a box of gum and selling individual pieces to movie-goers before they headed into the theater. Later, as a 15-year-old, he persuaded his teachers to let him learn architecture drafting instead of mechanical drawing at Tech High School.
Having this particular blend of conceptual creativity and technical curiosity is a powerful combination for any architect, says Tristan Al-Haddad, Arch 01. A part-time lecturer in Tech’s School of Architecture, Al-Haddad grew up in Atlanta while Portman’s buildings were being erected. He first discovered Portman’s skyscraping designs when he traveled into the city for his part-time, high-school job.
“I used to ride the 121 MARTA bus down Memorial Drive to downtown, where I ran a storefront window-washing business as a student,” Al-Haddad says. It was there that he experienced many of Portman’s works up close—notably the Hyatt Regency, Peachtree Plaza and the Marriott Marquis—featuring the architect’s signature soaring atriums. With his central, light-filled atriums, Portman developed a completely new building type—a rare achievement for an architect. Portman went on to design similar structures across the globe, from San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center to Singapore’s Marina Square.
Al-Haddad, who today is an accomplished researcher and artist, says that Portman set a precedent for architects who wanted to push their practices into a new age.
“Fundamentally, Portman was a typological innovator,” he says. “He understood the history and evolution of architecture and realized that he could continue that tradition of innovation by restructuring how buildings are organized.”
Portman embodied a spirit of experimentation, exploration, novelty and innovation. That same spirit has been “part of the cultural milieu of teaching and learning in the School of Architecture and College of Design at Georgia Tech,” says Al-Haddad.
Portman’s drive and lack of complacency are also a trademark of Tech students, Al-Haddad says. “With a strong vision of what a city should be and how his work would help accomplish that vision, he went out and found the opportunities and the partners needed to make it happen,” he says. “I think this ‘can-do, will-do’ spirit informed both my teaching and research at Georgia Tech, and my creative practice at Formations Studio.”
The architectural diversity Al-Haddad first experienced as a teenager in Downtown Atlanta became a life-long influence on his career.
“I learned a tremendous amount from walking around on the streets, looking at the buildings,” he says. “I studied, in an informal manner, the architectonic sensibility of each structure. Of course, I didn’t know the word ‘architectonic’ when I was 15, but I learned so much just by walking around Downtown Atlanta.”
Maverick Move to Real-Estate Development
Always an entrepreneur, Portman became one of the first architects to incorporate real estate development into his architecture practice. “I think he understood the collaborative approach that was necessary to deliver the built environment,” says Rick Porter, who also earned his architecture degree from Georgia Tech, but became a developer soon after graduation.
As the director of Tech’s master’s in real estate development program, Porter, Arch 75, works to translate Portman’s values and inspirations for his students.
“He combined numerous disciplines: planning, design, construction, business, engineering. They all have to come together in the development world. Portman made the development community understand the critical element of design, more than anyone. He was not a developer that went to a consultant for design work,” Porter says.
In doing so, Portman was able to merge human experience with the natural environment through his buildings, Porter says.
Porter looks to Peachtree Center as an example of Portman’s blend of design and development. The multi-block Downtown complex features six office buildings, a MARTA station, and dozens of restaurants and shops. The district is connected by elevated pedestrian “sky bridges,” which allow people to pass through the buildings without having to leave.
“The ‘buzz,’ if you will, of Peachtree Center always strikes me,” he says. “It’s a beehive of human activity. At the end of the day, developers create spaces that can be used over time, and produce a value that was not there before. I think Peachtree Center does that. It’s got commerce, food, human activity, pleasure, nature—all of those things. Downtown is a better place than it was before Portman came there.”
The educational key that makes something like Peachtree Center possible, Porter says, is an iterative process that breeds curiosity.
“Everything we do is iterative,” he says. “This is not a linear process whereby you go on to step two and then you go on to step three. If you think that way, it is very difficult to be curious enough to continue.”
Porter views Portman as a man who took curiosity and iteration to an extreme. “He was undaunted,” Porter says. “And it didn’t always work. He failed sometimes.”
As a former Tech student, and now a professor of practice, Porter sees the courage to fail as an undeniable aspect of studying at Georgia Tech. He tells his students that being curious enough to fail is what will lead to something bigger. “You’re going to fail more than you succeed here, but the resilience to embrace that failure is an important Georgia Tech way,” Porter says. “I can almost tell you to the detail, a third-quarter design project that I had as an undergraduate, and I just got crushed on it. I probably remember that more than some of my successes.”
Portman’s life and work provide quintessential examples of fearlessness for his students, Porter said.
“He was willing, as an architect, to risk developing a product that might not show design deficiencies until delivery,” he says. “Portman was curious enough, and at the same time, plucky, confident, almost cocky enough to then go on to say, ‘I can go to China and do this.'"
Planning Communities With Care
Portman designed his Atlanta buildings in response to a downtown district in decline during the 1960s and 70s.
Portman’s creations are often criticized as being “fortresses, these concrete facades in downtowns that separate citizens from the city,” says Catherine Ross, the Harry West Professor in Tech’s School of City & Regional Planning, as well as the director of the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development.
But Ross believes Portman’s work was an important step toward today’s city and regional planning theories, which focus on connectivity and pedestrian activity. “People were walking away from the city, and Portman says, ‘No. Let’s go downtown and remake the city. We can re-create this, we can create vistas that empower people and bring economic activity.’”
Ross views her work as a continuation of Portman’s logic. “I think that gave rise to an increased connection in cities, a focus on pedestrians,” Ross says. “Out of his work came what city planners are talking about now: the smart city, the city that gives priority to pedestrians, connecting cities of all sizes and scales through space. And the importance of that in terms of community and places.”
Portman’s decisions gave rise to an outstanding career and allowed him to make contributions globally. “Shanghai, San Francisco, Atlanta, it doesn’t matter where you look. Sixty different cities have his brand on them,” she says.
And while it may seem like Portman’s signature move was to zig when other architects and developers zagged, Ross says an underlying empathy strongly links Portman to the planning profession.
“He worried about communities,” she says. “Most architects, appropriately, worry about buildings—and they should. But I think Portman was bigger than that. He may not have always got it right, but I think he worried about communities, and neighborhoods, and people, and the idea that buildings should work for people. That’s what city planning is.”
Portman’s passion project of planting trees along Peachtree Street in Downtown Atlanta is also something planners aspire to, she says.
“Anytime you can create an experience with greens and infrastructure, and Peachtree is a classic example, it enhances the environment for whoever is enjoying the benefit of that space. It’s no doubt that those trees are an outreach on Portman’s part, to be more inclusive, more responsive,” Ross says.
His tree planting initiative contributes to Atlanta’s reputation as “the city in a forest.” Ross says that: “Whether people are walking, riding, or driving, they can have an experience with nature on Peachtree Street. That’s a very popular planning strategy, and I think a correct one, as we talk about revitalizing our avenues and boulevards in cities.”
Likewise, Portman’s design innovations have had lasting effects on cities all over the planet. For example, Ross says the glass elevator that he invented for his atrium concept in the Hyatt Regency in Downtown Atlanta was the most expensive elevator, at that time, in the world.
“I was in Asia this summer, and as I looked at the glass elevators, I thought, That’s Portman!” she says. “He gave people a different view of the city from that elevator, a way to get outside that building. It’s completely the model. And Asia is the best place to see it. The idea of this glass elevator has taken hold in a way that I think is uncanny,” Ross says.
You don’t look at Portman’s work and feel nothing, she adds. “It’s rousing and inspirational, that’s how his work gets me. What Portman did was create a renaissance, a rebirth. That’s huge! And it inspires us at Tech.”