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FROM ATLANTA TO SHANGHAI, JOHN PORTMAN'S DESIGNS EVOKE THE HUMAN SPIRIT
 In his half-century of designing some of the most lauded architectural landmarks in the world, John
Portman has arrived at a basic truth: people are more alike than unalike, at least when it comes to
their environments. "Everyone likes a waterfall or flowers," says Portman. "They are
organic, part of nature, as we are."
People are at the center of Portman's design philosophy and international success. He has tried to
create spaces and environments that enhance life, that evoke a positive human response, where people
feel good about themselves. As he wrote in The Architect as Developer, "Buildings should
serve people, not the other way around."
Portman, a 1987 inductee in the Robinson College of Business Hall of Fame, first appeared on the
architectural map in the early 1960s for his design of the one-million-square-foot Atlanta Merchandise
Mart, the largest building in the Southeast at that time. Just before the Mart's grand opening in June
1961, he visited Brasilia, the new capital of Brazil and its first major city to be built from scratch.
The timing of the trip and the Mart opening got Portman thinking in larger terms than just one building.
"I felt I should start thinking about what happens up the street and down the block," he says.
 The result of that thinking was Peachtree Center, the prototype of mixed-use development. Peachtree
Center now spreads across 13 city blocks as a city within a city. Portman envisioned a place where
people could work, eat, shop, stay in a hotel, attend church—the stuff of daily living. Now with
interconnected office towers, three landmark hotels, restaurants, marts, and shops, interwoven with parks
and plazas, the 18.4 million square feet of Peachtree Center has rejuvenated the central business district
of Atlanta, helping transform the regional Southern city into an international business destination.
Central to its layout is what Portman calls the coordinate unit, or the distance people will walk before
they turn to wheels. In Atlanta, Portman estimates the coordinate unit is 10 to 12 minutes. To help the
blocks of the expanding Peachtree Center coalesce, he added aerial bridges between offices, controversial
structures, he admits, but a way to encourage a pedestrian-friendly city and to keep people moving even in
inclement weather.
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Top photograph: SunTrust Plaza, Atlanta, Photography by Timothy Hursley.
Bottom photograph: Peachtree Center, Atlanta, Photography by Jonathan Hillyer.
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