‘Make it Something that Enhances Life’: The Architectural Philosophy of John C. Portman

Whatever I do, it’s mine. —John C. Portman Jr.¹

Few architects have had so profound an impact on a city as John C. Portman Jr. had on his hometown of Atlanta. In his fourteen-block redevelopment of the city’s downtown, he built two of the most spectacular hotels America has ever seen, revolutionizing hotel architecture in the process.

But Portman’s influence extends far beyond both Atlanta and hotel architecture. He transformed the downtowns of several American cities with his huge, interconnected developments before going on to create similarly impactful projects in Singapore and China. Throughout his seven-decade career, Portman exercised near-complete control over the design and construction of his buildings by going beyond the traditional role of an architect and working as the developer, financier, and marketer of his projects.

In so doing, he worked to implement his own ideas about how American cities should be designed through the planning of his buildings and the spaces between them. His maverick approach to architecture—and the nature of the buildings he built—attracted considerable criticism from his fellow architects and critics, yet the vast majority of his buildings were hugely successful and continue to attract visitors to this day.

‘The Architect as Developer’: An Integrated Approach

When Portman’s high-school technical drawing teacher suggested that he might be interested in architecture, Portman “didn’t even know how to spell it.”² But he took the teacher’s advice, explored the subject, and rapidly developed an affinity for it. After a period in the navy during WWII, he studied architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology, graduating in 1950 and going to work at the firm of Stevens and Wilkinson.

In the same year, he met one of his architectural heroes, who introduced him to a philosophic way of approaching the subject. Portman recounted, “I was fortunate to meet Frank Lloyd Wright in 1950. He turned me on to philosophy by saying, ‘Philosophy is a handmaiden of serious and meaningful architecture. Young man, go seek Emerson.’” Portman did. He recalled that over the following three years, “[I] poured myself into philosophy in my free moments.”³

The element of self-reliance in Emerson’s thought deeply affected Portman, who longed to produce buildings that were uniquely his. So, after obtaining his architectural license in 1953, he went into business with his former teacher, Griffith Edwards. “I opened my own office alone with no work, . . . and I struggled for three years with small commissions—houses, schoolroom additions, remodeling.”⁴ Portman longed to do bigger jobs, which would give him the chance to combine three elements from three of his influences at the time: the “humanity” of Wright’s “organic approach,” the grander-scale vision of Le Corbusier, and the geometric precision of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Leaving Edwards to handle the administrative side of the business, Portman began looking for opportunities to express himself architecturally. . . .

About Thomas Walker-Werth

Thomas Walker-Werth is associate editor at The Objective Standard and a fellow at both Objective Standard Institute and Foundation for Economic Education. He is currently writing his first full-length book, Reason for Living: A Rational, Fact-Based Approach to Living Your Best Life. Follow more of his writing at <a href="http://reasonforliving.substack.com".

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