Architect’s ‘Cottage’ : His Dream a Nightmare to Neighbors

John Portman’s atrium hotels have delighted many travelers with their vaulting interior courtyards, gardens, balconies, waterfalls, fountains, reflecting pools and glass elevators.

But the dream house that the internationally renowned Atlanta architect is building for himself on this exclusive resort island is reminiscent of one of those hotels and is giving some of his neighbors here nightmares.

Big houses are the rule in this secluded colony of white-columned mansions and Mediterranean-style villas set beneath stately oaks dripping with Spanish moss and palms swaying in the salty breezes. But Portman’s “cottage”--as all homes here are euphemistically called--is big almost beyond belief.

The master bedroom alone--one of the house’s 10 sleeping chambers--covers about 2,000 square feet--only 200 square feet shy of the minimum size requirement for an entire home here. Eighteen colossal cement columns anchor the house, which has a total of 44,000 square feet of living space, and a huge ramp runs from the front of the structure to the rear.

Trademark Features

As in Portman’s trademark hotels, there will be atriums, gardens, waterfalls, fountains, outdoor sculptures, balconies and elevators when construction is completed around the end of the year.

What is more, all of this rises in an architectural explosion of glass, concrete and geometric shapes from a beachfront site of only about two acres, dwarfing the not-so-humble homes around it and setting teeth to gnashing up and down the 26-mile length of the narrow southeast Georgia island.

“It’s a monstrosity,” said one Sea Island homeowner. “I thought architects were supposed to design buildings to fit into the setting. But Portman’s house is too overpowering for the site. It’s destroying the charm of the island.”

“It may be a work of art,” said another resident, who, like most people interviewed for this article, asked to remain anonymous, “but I think it lends itself better to a West Coast location--like a bluff in California overlooking the Pacific Ocean.”

Likened to Taj Mahal

One nearby resident--fed up with the incessant construction noises, the troops of onlookers parading daily around the building site and the prospect of “living in the shadow of the Taj Mahal,” according to friends--has put his own home up for sale.

There may be more than a little envy mixed up in the reactions of some Sea Island homeowners to Portman’s dream house. As a businessman who visits here frequently observes: “These people who’ve built down here all think they’ve got pretty fancy homes. But Portman’s making them all feel like pea pickers.”

As befits the island, which a promotional brochure describes as a “distinguished resort preferred by those who value gracious living in elegant surroundings,” the controversy has been polite and low key--unlike the highly publicized outcry that erupted in Beverly Hills, Calif., when a wealthy Arab sheik filled the huge concrete pots outside his 38-room mansion on Sunset Boulevard with plastic flowers and painted the classical statues on the front veranda to point up their nudity. But many are the Sea Island residents who fervently wish that Portman had never broken ground for his home.

About the only people who seemed pleased with the home--Portman has dubbed it “Entelechy II,” which can be translated loosely from Greek as “dream come true”--are officers of the Sea Island Co., the 66-year-old firm that owns the island and is the guardian of its elite tradition.

“It’s a very unusual house--there’s no question about that,” said Dewey Benefield, vice president of the Sea Island Co. “But I think, architecturally, it’s going to be a very important house. Once it’s finished and the landscaping completed, I think a lot of the controversy over it will die down.”

Reported Cost of $12 Million

Portman has said little publicly about the house, which has been under construction for more than two years and reportedly is costing more than $12 million--four or five times the cost of the next most expensive home on the island.

In an article he wrote for the Atlanta Constitution last year, he rejected the idea that his Sea Island vacation retreat was a monument to his ego. “I don’t need to build a monument to myself. If I needed a monument, I have them all over the world. Hell, what’s a little house?”

Danielle Martin, a spokeswoman for Portman’s Atlanta-based architectural and development firm, John Portman & Associates, said her boss shuns publicity about the house out of concern for the privacy of his neighbors on Sea Island.

“He could have found an island in a remote place to build it on,” she said. “But the Portman family has close ties to Sea Island. They love it, just as so many people do, and they don’t enjoy having all this hoopla made over the house. They don’t want it turned into a tourist attraction.”

But, to the dismay of most Sea Islanders, that is exactly what the house has become. T. W. Jones, one of the around-the-clock security guards Portman has hired to keep curiosity-seekers away from the construction, says that on a single day this summer more than 500 people came to see the home, which is in plain view from adjacent side streets and the public beach in front.

Acts as Tourist Guide

“I feel like more of a tourist guide than a security guard,” said Jones, who readily points out to inquisitive sightseers features like the huge bronze Picasso statue set on a lofty perch on one side or the 18,100-square-foot concrete sunscreen that was cast in place over the house like a giant arbor and eventually will be planted with cascading greenery.

Among the thousands of visitors was former President Jimmy Carter, a frequent Sea Island guest, who was lured to the site in late 1984 by a giant construction crane that loomed over the area. The crane--110 feet tall with a boom 173 feet long--was of the type ordinarily used on skyscrapers.

Carter was out jogging when he first saw the project. Later, he brought his wife, Rosalynn, and his brother, Billy, and reportedly stayed for about two hours, looking around and asking questions.

As an architect, the 61-year-old Portman is no stranger to controversy. When the Atlanta Hyatt Regency, the progenitor of his revolutionary atrium-style hotels, was under construction in the 1960s, hotelier Conrad Hilton said of it: “That concrete monster will never fly.” It did, of course, and remains one of the Georgia capital’s most popular hotels.

‘Disneylands for Adults’

Portman’s later hotels, which include the five-tower Bonaventure in Los Angeles and the mammoth Marriott Marquis in Manhattan, have been denounced as “Disneylands for adults.” Portman, who believes buildings should be fun, admitted in a 1982 magazine interview that “I don’t really object to” that accusation.

But perhaps the harshest indictments of his work are reserved for his mixed-used developments, such as the Peachtree Center in Atlanta and the Renaissance Center in Detroit--massive complexes of hotels, office buildings, restaurants and shops that he refers to as “environments.”

Critics have called them “introspective megastructures” that encapsulate all the attractions within fortress-like structures and have a deadening effect on the surrounding environment, particularly the street life.

“They work very well from the inside but not very well on the outside,” said Eileen Segrest, executive director of the Atlanta Preservation Center. “I hasten to add, however, that I think Portman has become much more sensitive to the life outside such buildings in recent years.”

Oddly enough, Portman’s architectural philosophy is based on his love for the lively street life of the great European cities--the sidewalk cafes in Paris, the bustling piazzas in Venice. For the most part, he has tried to create such “neighborhoods” indoors.

“I’m a people watcher,” he is fond of saying. “I try to analyze what brings people pleasure and makes them smile. I try to analyze what it is about places like Venice and Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen that makes people happy.”

But there are few smiles in Sea Island over his new home.

“Architecture really wants to be a good neighbor to its surroundings and say: ‘I respect you,’ ” said a prominent Atlanta architect who once worked in an office with Portman during their early professional years. “All Portman’s house says is: ‘Look at me, baby, I’ve made it.’ ”