A Westin hotel crowns the Bund Center in Shanghai. Click Here or on the picture to see a video of Trevor Williams describing how easy it is to stumble upon Portman buildings in Shanghai.

A scaled model of Shanghai takes up an entire room at the city’s Urban Planning Exhibition Hall, showing current buildings as well those planned for completion before the World Expo 2010.  Photos by Trevor Williams

Delta Air Lines Inc. got a lot of buzz when it launched a much-anticipated nonstop flight to China last month, but the hometown airline isn’t the only Atlanta company making its mark in the Shanghai skies.

John Portman & Associates Inc., an Atlanta-based architectural firm, has made some high-flying contributions to a city where rapid economic development has created one of the world’s premier canvasses for building design. And unlike Delta, Portman isn’t a newcomer to the Chinese market. 

Along with Portman Holdings LLC, its development arm, Portman & Associates has 15 projects designed, built or currently under construction in Shanghai alone, and the company Web site’s list of projects in mainland China is more than twice that long. 

The Portman Ritz-Carlton Shanghai anchors the 48-story middle tower of the Shanghai Centre.  Two 34-story apartment buildings rise on the hotel’s flanks, rounding out a mixed-use facility that also includes a theater, offices and retail space.  

The well-known complex, the largest real estate investment in China at its time, was completed in 1990, paving the way for the development of other properties, including the 60-story, obelisk-like Tomorrow Square complex, capped by 340-room J.W. Marriott hotel, and the Bund Center, crowned by a Westin hotel.

Although one can scarcely stroll Shanghai without seeing a Portman building now, the company’s CEO told GlobalAtlanta that making the initial splash in the Chinese market wasn’t easy.

John C. (Jack) Portman III, son of company founder and namesake architect John Portman, said the Shanghai Centre took nine years to complete.  Mr. (Jack) Portman, who also serves as vice chairman of Portman Holdings, sees the building as a testament to the company’s firm commitment to Asia, particularly China.

The project began in 1981, two years after ruler Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening policies gave foreign investors access to China.

At that time, “there was no legislative system that would protect the land owner.  There was no title to land, and there was no precedent for a joint venture real estate project between a foreigner and a Chinese entity, so everything we did at that time was breaking new ground,” Mr. Portman told GlobalAtlanta before a dinner Delta hosted in Shanghai to celebrate the launch of the flight.

While China in recent years has been criticized for basing too much of its economic strategy on foreign manufacturing and exports, the Chinese government was markedly isolationist in its trade policies for the first 30 years of the People’s Republic’s existence. 

Now moving in the opposite direction, this year marks the 30th anniversary Mr. Deng’s policies, which are widely credited as the initial catalyst for China’s breakneck economic ascent.

Immediately after reform and opening, some saw the Communist regime’s inexperience with foreign investment as a red flag, but for Mr. Portman, China’s forbidden nature added to its mystique, attracting him even more.

The supposed danger and mystery of China “created an enigmatic sort of attraction to a land that was not accessible,” he said.  “And because it wasn’t accessible, naturally you wanted to access it.”

Aside from an adventurous spirit, the need for “geographical diversification” in the business of real estate development drove Mr. Portman’s desire to extend the company’s reach in Asia.

The futuristic buildings in the Pudong district offer a glimpse at how architects are making their mark on Shanghai’s canvas.

It can help “smooth out some of the fluctuations in what is a cyclical business,” Mr. Portman said.

With that goal in mind, Mr. Portman set up an office in Hong Kong in 1980, from which he was involved a variety of projects in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. 

A representative office was established in Shanghai in 1993, and now the company has projects in more than 10 Chinese cities.  Outside Shanghai, Portman is most active in Hangzhou, a city about 40 miles southeast of the bustling financial center. 

At the Delta celebration, Mr. Portman said he was on a typical Asia trip.  He had come in from Seoul, South Korea, where the company has a 151-story mixed-use building in the works, and he was leaving the next day for Mumbai, India.

He said the new Delta flight would make it easier for his company to come to Shanghai more often. 

For Atlanta businesspeople from small- to medium-sized companies using the flight to enter the Chinese market, Mr. Portman said to be careful and pick the right resources.

“You need a local partner of some sort, and there are a lot of people offering that role, but you have to be careful. It’s like picking a wife,” he said.