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.
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