Tour architect John Portman's beach home, Entelechy II

(Image credit: Bartolotti Media)

There's grand, and then there's architect John Portman's beach home in Sea Island, Georgia – Entelechy II. The property, which was designed by the eminent American architect in 1986, as his personal vacation escape, is majestic and playful, balancing drama and awe in equal measure; and importantly, it is set to put a smile on your face.

Tour Entelechy II, architect John Portman's beach home

The design of Entelechy II is generous and inspiring, unexpected and awash with light. Opening to Atlantic Ocean views, this is a home that takes modernist architecture and gives it a truly unique twist.

When we covered the home as part of a profile on John Portman in the December 2009 issue of Wallpaper*, writer Eva Hagberg described it at the time as: 'a whirlwind of architectural activity, bounded on the bottom by the ground and on the top by a laid-on grid that would make even Rosalind Krauss happy. In between are three rows of six columns, exploded as though a pole has been driven into the centre of each, pushing the sides outwards.'

Hagberg continued: 'Some of the columns are empty, derailed simply with the green – and only green – plants that take over the building, while others are filled with a winding staircase or, in one case, an elevator. They are all central to the design, the exploded column being Portman's way of “understanding the essence of the column”, an experiment and search he had begun in Entelechy I [Portman's previous home], itself a search for the very essence of architecture.'

This was a project crafted for Portman and his family's own use. The architect told us at the time of his design explorations: 'There will never be another you, and there will never be another me.'

Explaining his search for the internal core of humanity, and the house's drive to articulate that architecturally, Portman added: 'The trick is to try to understand the essence of what you are.'

The tour de force that is Entelechy II is on sale via Chase Mizell of Atlanta Fine Homes & Sotheby’s International Realty and Susan Imhoff and Ann Harrell of DeLoach Sotheby’s International Realty.

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Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).