Photo:
Lem Lynch Photography for John Portman & Associates
John Portman went the unorthodox route of both developing and designing his projects. His handiwork is all over Atlanta, with the multibuilding Peachtree Center as perhaps the most prominent example. His projects are also in cities like New York, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai and Dallas.
He has designed and developed several hotels with distinctive multistory indoor atria and rooms looking out onto them. The Hyatt Regency Atlanta used this design, and when it opened in 1967, it was received as an innovative space that would help spur a decades-long building boom in downtown Atlanta. — Scott Klocksin
