Entelechy II: architect John Portman’s majestic seaside residence hits the market

There’s grand, after which there’s architect John Portman’s seaside residence in Sea Island, Georgia – Entelechy II. The property, which was designed by the eminent American architect in 1986, as his private trip escape, is majestic and playful, balancing drama and awe in equal measure; and importantly, it’s set to place a smile in your face.

Tour Entelechy II, architect John Portman’s seaside residence

The design of Entelechy II is beneficiant and provoking, sudden and awash with mild. Opening to Atlantic Ocean views, this can be a residence that takes modernist structure and provides it a very distinctive twist.

After we lined the house as a part of a profile on John Portman within the December 2009 challenge of Wallpaper*, author Eva Hagberg described it on the time as: ‘a whirlwind of architectural exercise, bounded on the underside by the bottom and on the highest by a laid-on grid that may make even Rosalind Krauss pleased. In between are three rows of six columns, exploded as if a pole has been pushed into the centre of every, pushing the edges outwards.’

Hagberg continued: ‘Among the columns are empty, derailed merely with the inexperienced – and solely inexperienced – vegetation that take over the constructing, whereas others are crammed with a winding staircase or, in a single case, an elevator. They’re all central to the design, the exploded column being Portman’s means of “understanding the essence of the column”, an experiment and search he had begun in Entelechy I [Portman’s previous home], itself a seek for the very essence of structure.’

This was a undertaking crafted for Portman and his household’s personal use. The architect informed us on the time of his design explorations: ‘There’ll by no means be one other you, and there’ll by no means be one other me.’

Explaining his seek for the interior core of humanity, and the home’s drive to articulate that architecturally, Portman added: ‘The trick is to attempt to perceive the essence of what you might be.’

The tour de power that’s Entelechy II is on sale through Chase Mizell of Atlanta Superb Properties & Sotheby’s Worldwide Realty and Susan Imhoff and Ann Harrell of DeLoach Sotheby’s Worldwide Realty.

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