Design

How to Care for Your Portman Hotel

Architects chime in on how to make the right interventions inside and out of the late developer-architect’s distinct buildings.
One of the street-killing concrete berms designed as part of Detroit's Renaissance Center was removed as part of SOM's redesign in 2002.Carlos Osorio/AP

Between the late 1960s and early 1980s, few architects or developers could rival John Portman’s impact on America’s downtowns. And few built in such intensely polarizing ways.

With the rare luxury of being both an architect and developer on his projects, Portman, who died in December at the age of 93, brought the promise of urban revitalization from New York to Los Angeles through his signature cylindrical glass and concrete slab hotel complexes with unforgettable interiors.