ABSTRACT
John Portman's Hyatt Regency Atlanta reinvented the atrium hotel in the midst of massive urban upheaval in the post-war United States. 1 Portman's account of the Hyatt Regency's atrium design captures something of its 'sudden' appearance, the 'explosion' of the lobby into the atrium:
I didn’t want the hotel to be just another set of bedrooms. The typical central-city hotel has always been a cramped thing with a narrow entranceway, dull and dreary lobby for registration. Elevators over in a corner, a closed elevator cab, a dimly lighted corridor, a nondescript doorway, and a hotel room with a bed, a chair, and a hole in the outside wall. That was the central city hotel. I wanted to do something in total opposition to all this. I wanted to explode the hotel; to open it up; to create a grandeur of space, almost a resort, in the centre of the city. The whole idea was to open everything up; take the hotel from its closed, tight position, and explode it. 2
