Portman’s America and Other Speculations

Portman’s America and Other Speculations takes an unconventional and speculative approach towards the understanding and future potentials of the work of one of the world’s most creative, controversial, daring, and prolific architects. Combining the talents of an architect, artist, and developer, John Portman was able to embark on a series of large-scale building projects-megastructures-that radically redefined the relationship of architecture to the city and its citizens. Portman’s own voice and ideas complement the contributions of others, including new photographs by Iwan Baan, to present a more complex and nuanced reading of both the architect and his architecture. Finally, the repertoire of Portman’s buildings is analyzed in meticulous detail and used by a group of students from the Harvard Graduate School of Design as a catalyst for a host of divergent and new architectural speculations. AUTHOR: Mohsen Mostafavi is Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design. He has served on the steering committee of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture and the juries of the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Contruction and the RIBA Gold Medal. SELLING POINTS: . John Portman (b. 1924) is an American neofuturistic architect known for multi storied interior atria. Some of his more famous buildings are the Peachtree Center complex in Atlanta and the New York Marriot Marquis. . This book has new photographs included by Iwan Baan. . A group of students from the Harvard Graduate School of Design analyze Portman’s architecture in detail and speculate about the future of architecture. . Many of Portman’s projects were large-scale and he has won achievement awards such as the The Lynn S. Beedle Lifetime Achievement Award for these huge structures. . This book has 396 illustrations of Portman’s architecture. 396 illustrations — ISBN13: 9783037785324