Renaissance Center (deposit photo)
Renaissance Center (deposit photo)
Renowned architect John Portman, who died Friday in Atlanta at age 93, designed Detroit's towering Renaissance Center more than 40 years ago.
He leaves behind a legacy, a grand building that helped define Detroit's skyline, but one that is truly impractical and has its share of critics.
John Gallagher of the Detroit Free Press writes:
It's a troubled legacy. In terms of architecture and urban design, Portman's Renaissance Center — four 39-story office towers surrounding a 73-story hotel built for $350 million in 1977 — created as many problems as it solved.
As Portman designed it, the RenCen stood aloof from the rest of the city rather than integrating itself into the streetscape. Enormous mechanical berms blocked it off from the rest of downtown. The RenCen squatted on the riverside but ignored it, blocking access to the waterfront.
The building itself became notoriously hard to navigate. It was said that globetrotting journalist Lowell Thomas got lost there. He was not alone.
Of course, he had his fans, Gallagher notes:
Portman's fans loved the soaring futuristic atriums he created in the RenCen and similar projects in other cities. And those dark-glass cylindrical towers injected a shot of space-age modernism into a Detroit downtown still known mostly for its classic 1920s-era skyscrapers like the Guardian and Penobscot.