Interior Urbanism: Architecture, John Portman and Downtown America

Description

Vast interior spaces have become ubiquitous in the contemporary city. The soaring atriums and concourses of mega-hotels, shopping malls and transport interchanges define an increasingly normal experience of being ‘inside’ in a city. Yet such spaces are also subject to intense criticism and claims that they can destroy the quality of a city’s authentic life ‘on the outside’. Interior Urbanism explores the roots of this contemporary tension between inside and outside, identifying and analysing the concept of interior urbanism and tracing its history back to the works of John Portman and Associates in 1960s and 70s America. Portman – increasingly recognised as an influential yet understudied figure – was responsible for projects such as Peachtree Center in Atlanta and the Los Angeles Bonaventure Hotel, developments that employed vast internal atriums to define a world of possibilities not just for hotels and commercial spaces, but for the future of the American downtown amid the upheavals of the 1960s and 70s. The book analyses Portman’s architecture in order to reconsider major contexts of debate in architecture and urbanism in this period, including the massive expansion of a commercial imperative in architecture, shifts in the governance and development of cities amid social and economic instability, the rise of postmodernism and critical urban studies, and the defence of the street and public space amid the continual upheavals of urban development. In this way the book reconsiders the American city at a crucial time in its development, identifying lessons for how we consider the forces at work, and the spaces produced, in cities in the present. Cover page Halftitle page Title page Copyright page CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A note on images PROLOGUE: THE ATRIUM EFFECT 1 TRANSFORMATIONS IN MODERN ARCHITECTURE ‘What do these two pictures have in common?’ Mapping postmodern hyperspace 2 THE BUSINESS OF ARCHITECTURE AND DEVELOPMENT ‘A continually-evolving character without precise definition’ 3 ATLANTA, NEW AMERICAN CITY Changing demographics and emerging alliances Central Atlanta Progress Investor prerogative Pedestrianism, but not as we know it 4 THE GEOMETRY OF INTERIOR URBANISM Entelechy Peachtree Center Embarcadero Center Bonaventure Hotel Renaissance Center Consistency and proliferation 5 URBAN STUDIESON THE STREET Street life Architects and sociologists on the street Incorporating the street EPILOGUE: ON HOLLOW FORMS NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX