One of downtown Atlanta's most familiar and most criticized architectural signatures has drawn a fresh proposal — not to remove it, but to open it up.
Architect and designer Bushra Aumir has published a case study reexamining John Portman's glass-enclosed skywalks as mixed-use nodes that could reconnect what the study calls the city's “fragmented pedestrian network,” reimagining currently uninviting stretches as space “for cultural programming, historical memory, and shared ritual.”
The vision appeared in the Common Edge publication under the headline “The Atlanta We Inherit: History, Architecture, and the Fight for Public Space.” The overarching goal would be reclaiming the skybridges and adjacent property to serve a denser urban core, while still acknowledging the structures' place in downtown's architectural history.
Colloquially known as downtown's “hamster tubes,” the skywalks offer quick, air-conditioned connections between landmark buildings and become a favorite congregation point for Dragon Con revelers each Labor Day weekend. But for decades they have drawn criticism for the way they pull activity off the street — as an AJC feature put it, they “suck life off the sidewalks and privatize public space.”
Aumir developed the concept as an independent research project while living in Atlanta and working for the Washington, DC-based architecture and engineering firm Page. It carries none of the funding or political machinery behind a project like the Stitch, but it takes seriously a piece of downtown infrastructure that already exists, is already paid for, and is usually discussed only as a problem.
Source: Urbanize Atlanta, published September 2025.