Architect John C. Portman’s most personal masterpiece has just set a new benchmark for Georgia real estate. Entelechy II, the late architect’s extraordinary oceanfront estate on Sea Island, has sold for $30 million, marking the highest residential sale ever recorded in the state. The property was offered publicly for the first time last year with a $40 million asking price, but even at its newly achieved number, it now stands alone at the top of Georgia’s luxury market.
Portman designed the home in 1986 as a private retreat for his family, channeling the same visionary style that reshaped skylines in Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. The house, featured in Architectural Digest in 1987, has long been a pilgrimage site for architecture enthusiasts—a rare residential expression of the dramatic atriums, bold geometry, and fluid indoor-outdoor compositions that defined Portman’s most iconic hotel projects. He dubbed the retreat Entelechy II, a companion to his Atlanta residence, Entelechy I, both meant to embody the realization of creative potential.
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John Portman Entelechy II Sea Island Georgia sold
The roughly 13,000-square-foot residence is anchored by a soaring multistory atrium supported by a dozen columns that rise to the ceiling three floors above. Balconies dressed in vines cantilever over a shallow, stone-lined pool, while sculptural details animate the central space. Several columns conceal surprises—one hides a full wet bar, another encloses an elevator, and a third contains a corkscrew staircase that twists up to a crow’s nest with wraparound views of the Atlantic.
John Portman Entelechy II Sea Island Georgia sold
The rest of the home continues with the same sense of playful experimentation. A second-floor living room includes a circular cutout that looks down into the dining room below, which sits inside a glass cylinder; an ocean-facing library is tucked beneath a canopy of tubular white beams; and the kitchen and lounge spaces open onto terraces that step down toward the pool deck. Outside, a series of bridges, spiral stairs, and multicolored sculptures by Portman blur the line between built form and landscape. A gated path leads to a small lookout tower and onward to Sea Island’s private beach. A separate 3,400-square-foot guest cottage with four bedrooms adds flexibility to the compound.
The record-setting sale was handled by Chase Mizell of Atlanta Fine Homes Sotheby’s International Realty and Susan Imhoff and Ann Harrell of DeLoach Sotheby’s International Realty, who also represented the buyer. For a property that has fascinated architects for nearly four decades—and had never before changed hands—the milestone price underscores its singular place in Georgia’s architectural and residential real estate history books.
Click here to see more photos of Entelechy II.
John Portman Entelechy II Sea Island Georgia sold
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