Making Sense of John Portman

The architect and developer John Portman, who died late last December at the age of 93, created some of the most iconic buildings of the late 20th century. He opened his own office in his home city of Atlanta in 1953, and it wasn’t long before a few house commissions turned into a series of megaprojects that redefined that city.

In 1961, the Atlanta Merchandise Mart opened downtown and was immediately the largest building by floor area in the city. That same year, Peachtree Center, a 14-block area continuously developed to this day, debuted. In 1965, he opened his first and only public housing project, the eight-story Antoine Graves senior center just outside downtown Atlanta. The humble structure, which was demolished in 2009, was the first of his to include an atrium—something he soon became famous for when he applied it to his design for the Hyatt Regency Atlanta.