The 1986 house’s rectangular sunscreen represents a beach umbrella, while the pool area is framed by two sculptures – the white curls of Squiggly and the stacked cubes of Dolly, both 1986 – among the numerous works Portman incorporated into the design. Photography: Thomas Ibsen

No matter how hard you might want to try, it is very difficult to stray off course at John Portman’s Sea Island house. The architect and developer (1924 – 2017) who was based in Atlanta, designed this summer getaway – its basic post-and-lintel construction an update of his early 1960s Atlanta home – as a study in course-correction and control and in autobiography and narrative. It’s impossible to get off course and almost inevitable you will get lost.

无论你多么想尝试，在约翰·波特曼的海岛房子里偏离路线是非常困难的。这位建筑师和开发商(1924-2017年)住在亚特兰大，他设计了今夏的度假之旅-这是他20世纪60年代初亚特兰大住宅的基础建筑，是他在亚特兰大的住宅的更新-作为一项课程修正和控制以及自传和叙事方面的研究。要偏离航线是不可能的，而且几乎是不可避免的，你会迷路的。

Portman himself was a study of extremes. A self-described Emersonian – ‘philosophy is my avocation’, he said one afternoon in his central Atlanta office (filled with his sculptures, his office wall detailed with a gigantic, almost Pollock-ish painting he produced) – and, it is said, the inspiration for Tom Wolfe’s central character in the bombast-and-power novel A Man in Full. He embodied an elusive combination of massive and disciplined power and the desire for contemplative self-reflection.

波特曼自己是对极端的研究。他说：“哲学是我的业余爱好”，他在亚特兰大中央局的一个下午（用他的雕塑、他的办公室墙详细地描述了他所创作的巨大的、近乎波尔图的绘画），并说，对汤姆·沃尔夫的中心角色的灵感来自于一个充满激情和权力的小说。他体现了一种难以捉摸的大规模和有纪律的力量的结合，以及对沉思自我反省的渴望。

Looking west, the bridge that runs from the east side of the house to the west. Hollow columns (the right-hand one containing stairs) support the sunscreen. Photography: Thomas Ibsen

往西看，这座桥从房子的东侧一直延伸到西边。中空柱(右手有楼梯)支撑防晒霜。摄影：托马斯·易卜生

As a developer, Portman built enough of Atlanta that he could look out of his office window and point to his Hyatt Regency (1967) across the street by way of illustrating an argument, direct the way a visitor should experience the Marriott Marquis (1985), his extravagant atrium hotel that is as well suited to a convention of 2,500 twelve-steppers as it is to a lone writer on the hunt for meaning, and be the force, too, behind the AmericasMart (1960), a fantastical atrium building that houses the largest of wholesale marketplaces. The office is also close to Portman’s Peachtree Center (1976) and the SunTrust Plaza (1993).

作为一名开发商，波特曼在亚特兰大建造了足够多的建筑，他可以从办公室的窗户往外看，指着街对面的凯悦摄政(1967年)，说明一个论点，指导游客体验万豪酒店的方式(1985年)，他奢华的中庭酒店非常适合2，500名12步者的惯例，就像一位孤独的作家在寻找意义一样，同时也是美国市场(1960)背后的力量，这是一座梦幻般的中庭建筑，容纳着最大的批发市场。该办公室还靠近波特曼桃树中心(1976年)和太阳信托广场(1993年)。

But we’re here to talk about, in between Emerson and Whitman, Entelechy II. Portman’s second house for himself and his family – after the early 1960s Entelechy I – Entelechy II was finished in 1986 on Sea Island, an exclusively ritzy, gated Barrier Island off the Georgia coast, a six-hour from central Atlanta.

但我们在这里谈论爱默生和惠特曼之间的恩泰勒西二世。波特曼为自己和他的家人建造的第二栋房子-上世纪60年代初，Entelechy I-Entelechy二世在佐治亚州海岸外的海岛(Sea Island)建成。海岛是佐治亚州海岸外一座完全豪华、封闭的巴里尔岛，距离亚特兰大市中心

Portman was aware that some architects do not want to design their own houses – for reasons ranging from not wanting to live in a physical expression of their everyday mental world, to the simple fact that clients (including themselves) are difficult. But he was engaged in a search for his entelechy – the Aristotelian concept of ‘having one’s end within’, or realising one’s potential – and designing, building and inhabiting his own home was the only way to keep this philosophical thread consistent and alive.

波特曼意识到，一些建筑师不想设计自己的房子-从不想生活在日常精神世界的物理表达中，到客户(包括他们自己)都很难这样的简单事实。但他一直在寻找自己的目标-亚里士多德式的‘有目的’的概念，或实现自己的潜能-而设计、建造和居住自己的家是保持这条哲学主线保持一致和活力的唯一途径。

The living room of the circular glass pavilion featuring the artwork Toreo, 1983, by Jean Arp and Egidio Costantini (in front of the ivy-covered window), a Mies van der Rohe chair (left) and Portman’s own ottoman (front right). Photography: Thomas Ibsen

圆形玻璃展馆的起居室，以1983年托雷奥艺术作品为特色，由让·阿普和埃吉迪奥·科斯坦蒂尼(在常春藤覆盖的窗户前)、米斯·范德洛椅子(左)和波特曼自己的脚凳(右前)组成。摄影：托马斯·易卜生

The combination of Aristotelian underlay with Emersonian action is what makes the house work. ‘There will never be another you, and there will never be another me,’ Portman said, explaining his search for the internal core of humanity, and the house’s drive to articulate that architecturally. ‘The trick is to try to understand the essence of what you are.’

亚里士多德式参考底图与Emersonian动作的组合是使房屋工作的内容。”Portman说，“永远不会有另一个你，永远不会再有其他的我，”Portman解释了他对人类的内在核心的搜索，以及房屋的驱动来表达这种结构。“诀窍在于试图了解你所拥有的本质。”

This devotion to his own uniqueness, to what Portman describes as the miracle of identity and existence, is what allows him to come up with and construct projects like the atrium hotel, which he made famous with the Hyatt Regency, very famous with the Marriott Marquis, and legendary through the photographs of Andreas Gursky, who immortalised the New York Marriott Marquis atrium hotel in Times Square, New York, 1997. ‘How do you understand yourself?’ He asked.

这种对自己独特性的执着，对波特曼所描述的身份和存在的奇迹的执着，使他得以想出并建造像中庭酒店这样的项目，它以凯悦酒店而闻名，以万豪侯爵而闻名于世，在纽约时代广场永垂不朽的安德烈亚斯·古尔斯基(Andreas Gursky)的照片中流传着传奇色彩。1997年。“你是怎么理解自己的？”他问。

Entelechy II is Portman’s way of articulating an answer, but it isn’t simple. The house is 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. Some of the columns are empty, detailed 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, itself a search for the very essence of architecture. Thinking about his first house, Portman had wondered when architecture itself started. ‘Architecture started when they raised the first column and then they raised the next one,’ he said. ‘So the column was key.’

Entelechy II是波特曼的回答方式，但并不简单。这座房子是建筑活动的旋风，底部被地面包围，顶部被铺设的网格所包围，甚至让罗莎琳德·克劳斯(Rosalind Krauss)都感到高兴。中间是由六根柱子组成的三排，好像一根杆子被推入了每一根柱子的中心，把两边推到了外面。有些柱子是空的，只是用绿色的-也只有绿色的-植物来描述，而其他的则是一个缠绕的楼梯，或者，在一个例子中，是一个电梯。它们都是设计的核心，爆炸的柱子是波特曼‘理解专栏本质’的方式，是他在Entelechy I开始的实验和搜索，这本身就是对建筑本质的探索。考虑到他的第一栋房子，波特曼想知道建筑本身是什么时候开始的。他说，建筑学从他们提出第一个专栏开始，然后又提出下一个专栏。“所以这列是关键。”

The dining room, with Portman’s ‘Entelechy’ chairs and a glass sculpture by Hans Frabel, is located in a glass pavilion set in a reflecting pool. Photography: Thomas Ibsen

餐厅，带有Portman的“Enteclechy”椅子和HansFrabel的玻璃雕塑，位于一个设置在反光池中的玻璃凉亭中。摄影：托马斯·布森

Those first Entelechy I columns were Portman’s initial run at turning what is typically only a structural or decorative element into a circulation space, a library, a gallery, a closet, or a study. The second stage is the house at Sea Island. ‘I always try to understand the evolution of the essence,’ Portman said of that jump, and then, as if realising that this could sound a little philosophy-lite, a little wishy-washy, a little bit as though it gives this architect – who already lived with an enormous amount of license to do whatever he wanted – even more licence, he added that it is not arbitrary. ‘I hate arbitrariness; I cannot handle that.’

第一批EntelechyI专栏是波特曼的第一次尝试，目的是把一个典型的结构或装饰元素转化为一个流通空间、一个图书馆、一个画廊、一个壁橱或一个书房。第二阶段是海岛的房子。“我总是试着理解本质的演变，”波特曼谈到这一跳跃时说，然后，仿佛意识到这可能听起来有点哲理-轻描淡写，有点含糊不清，似乎让这位建筑师-他已经获得了大量的许可-去做他想做的任何事-甚至更多的许可。他补充说，这不是武断的。“我讨厌任意性，我不能处理这件事。”

For this project, then, the driving design point was the idea of a man at the beach. Portman thought about this property, looking out over the Atlantic, tucked away off the main barely-a-road of this sheltered community, and thought about what someone would do there. ‘What comes to mind is the umbrellas sitting in the sand, and a blanket and a human being is lying there reading a book,’ he said. The Kraussian grid is the interpretation of an umbrella, the house that person, and the blanket the ground.

在这个项目中，驾驶设计点是一个男人在海滩上的想法。波特曼想到了这个地方，眺望着大西洋，躲开了这个被庇护的社区的主要道路，思考着有人会在那里做什么。他说，脑海中浮现的是躺在沙滩上的雨伞，还有一条毯子和一个人躺在那里看书。克劳斯格网是对雨伞、那人的房子和地上的毯子的解释。

The boundaries are relatively easy. It is the stuff that is representing the human that gets complicated. It’s not so difficult to create a literal and architectural umbrella, nor to give a house a sense of foundation. What is difficult, and where the house succeeds, is in its expression of the centrifugal forces of human autobiography. The house produces an architecture of the moment, rather than of connectivity, of discrete experiences that mirror the discreteness of the experience of life, of the separation of moments that we connect and then make coherent through various tellings and re-tellings. It is a collection of design decisions tied together by symmetry, colour and neutrality, and what remains is as elusive as a definitive autobiography.

边界相对容易。代表人类的东西变得复杂了。创造一个字面上的和建筑上的保护伞，或者给一所房子一种基础感，并不是那么困难。困难的地方，以及房子的成功之处，在于它表达了人类自传的离心力。这座房子产生了一种当下的建筑，而不是连接的建筑，它反映了生活经历的离散性，以及我们所连接的时刻的分离，然后通过各种提醒和重新讲述，使之协调一致。它是由对称、色彩和中立性联系在一起的设计决策的集合，剩下的就像一本权威的自传一样难以捉摸。

The house’s east side. On the first floor, vegetation masks the master suite. Photography: Thomas Ibsen

房子的东边。在一楼，植被覆盖了主套房。摄影：托马斯·布森

Self-narrative constantly changes. So does the experience of Entelechy II. Every door feels like a side door or back door, every hallway like it is just off the central axis, every room like it is at once central and peripheral. At every moment there is an overwhelming controlling symmetry that becomes a physical manifestation of the ways we tell stories with rhythm and meaning. Stories about how people met invariably focus on some improbable detail; so do stories about how they kept missing each other. Life is such a random collection of unrelated events that we, in our drive to understand its activity through narrative, create stories, linking point A to point B, and then point A to point C, and, sometimes, point A just to itself. Portman’s house embraces both the fact of narrative dispersion and the desire for meaning.

自我叙述不断变化。Entelechy II的经历也是如此。每一扇门都像侧门或后门，每一条走廊都像是偏离了中轴线，每一个房间都像它的中央和周边。每时每刻，都有一种压倒性的控制对称性，成为我们用节奏和意义讲述故事的方式的一种物理表现。关于人们如何相遇的故事总是集中在一些不可思议的细节上；关于他们如何不断地彼此思念的故事也是如此。生命是这样一个随机的不相关事件的集合，在我们通过叙事来理解它的活动的过程中，创造故事，把点A和点B，然后点A到点C，有时，点A只是自己。波特曼的房子既包括叙事分散的事实，也包括对意义的渴望。

Pragmatically, this is expressed most clearly in a central beam that runs from the front to the back of the house – if this is a house that can be said to have a front and back. Appearing like a gigantic diving board with symmetrical planes folded out on each side, the central plank curlicues down on the ocean side of the house almost to meet the swimming pool, itself a perfectly articulated piece of circularity and momentum.

从实用主义上讲，这一点最清楚地体现在从房子前面到后面的中央梁-如果这是一个可以说有正面和背面的房子。就像一个巨大的跳水板，在每一侧都有对称的平面，中央木板几乎在房子的海洋一侧向下弯曲，几乎与游泳池相遇，它本身是一个完美的圆形和动量。

Axes are everywhere. A line of stepping stones – placed just close enough together to make a natural gait impossible – leads to a walkway that runs parallel to the house’s moat and art galleries, filled with Portman’s labelled sculptures. A sharp turn left leads to a side door, which opens up into a hallway that leads to an open kitchen. The kitchen’s far wall, past the breakfast area, is split by a cut-out that frames the downstairs reading room across the indoor reflecting pool. Pass the kitchen and take a sharp turn right, and the axis becomes the central dining room, itself a circular space lined with a square of a banquette, centred around a square table with a circular chandelier above, and another square opening in the ceiling – just to round it all out.

斧头到处都是。一排垫脚石-放置的距离足够近，使自然步态变得不可能-通向一条与房子的护城河和艺术画廊平行的人行道，里面装满了波特曼的雕塑。左急转弯通向侧门，通向开放式厨房的走廊。厨房的远墙，经过早餐区，被隔在楼下的阅览室隔在室内反光池的框架隔开。经过厨房，向右急转弯，轴线就变成了中央餐厅，它本身就是一个圆形的空间，里面有一个方形的班格，围绕着一张正方形的桌子，上面有一盏圆形的吊灯，天花板上还有一个方形的开口-只是为了把它围起来。

Dooley’s Dance, 1986, by Portman, located on the entry pavilion’s roof terrace. Photography: Thomas Ibsen

杜利的舞蹈，1986年，由波特曼，位于入口亭的屋顶露台。摄影：托马斯·易卜生

Everything throughout the house is layered in this way – circles on square on circles on square – and everything course-corrects back to a view over the ocean and a controller experience of the house. Walkways throughout the house connect everything to everything else, but it can be difficult to see how to get from here to there. It’s easy to hear people’s voices and to be able to see them, but it takes a second of mental mapping to figure out that the best way to get there is to walk up a particular column of stairs, wind around, stretch up the long walkway, and then spiral up again to the top-most observation tower. From up there, the entire grid, punctuated by sculptural fireplace elements that bring a burst of colour to the bright white flatness, rolls itself out.

整个房子的一切都是这样分层的-在广场上的圆圈，在广场上的圆圈-和所有的课程-纠正回到一个海洋的看法和一个房子的控制器的经验。整个房子的走道把所有的东西都连接起来，但是很难看到怎么从这里到那里。很容易听到人们的声音，也很容易看到他们的声音，但需要一秒钟的心理映射才能找到到达那里的最佳途径是走上一列特定的楼梯，绕着风，伸展到长长的人行道上，然后再螺旋上升到最顶端的观察塔。从上面，整个网格，点缀着雕塑的壁炉元素，给明亮的白色平面带来了强烈的色彩。

It’s a perfect way of encapsulating a life, of rigidly connecting all the dots that make up the varieties of educational experience, and Portman was fully aware of the fact that this might be the last house he buildt for himself. ‘I think part of being human is that we can’t conceive of the end,’ he said. ‘Of course, you can’t avoid the end.’

这是一种完美的方式来封装一种生活，严格地将构成各种教育经验的所有点连在一起，波特曼完全意识到这可能是他为自己建造的最后一栋房子。他说，我认为人类的部分原因是我们无法想象最终的结局。“当然，你不能逃避结局。”

Entelechy II isn’t an attempt at avoiding the end, but it is a way of encapsulating a life so as to have a definitive market on what it was like. ‘I wasn’t aware, when I was born, of everything that had happened behind me,’ Portman said, echoing the beginning of Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, in which the novelist is utterly distraught to see pictures of his parents before he was born, a clear indicator of a world that existed without him. ‘Now I’ve been exposed to all this, and now I’ve got another door.’

Entelechy II不是一种逃避结局的尝试，但它是一种封装生活的方式，以便对它是什么样的有一个明确的市场。波特曼说：“当我出生时，我根本不知道身后发生的一切。”这与纳博科夫开始说话时的记忆如出一辙。纳博科夫出生前，这位小说家非常焦急地看着父母的照片，这清楚地表明了一个没有他的世界。“现在我已经暴露在这一切中了，现在我又有了一扇门。”

This isn’t a morbid death-reflection. This is, rather, Portman’s way of inserting himself into the circularity of nature. ‘It’s all about renewal,’ he said. ‘And if you acknowledge infinity, then there’s no end and no beginning.’ Portman jumped from Emerson to Kant, and to the philosopher’s argument that all reality is mind-made. ‘Take your mind and make your own reality,’ Portman said, describing the mind as a beautiful but out-of-control stallion – ‘he’s strong and he’s fast, but what is he accomplishing?’ – that needs a jockey. ‘You put a jockey on your mind, and you direct all that energy, and it makes a difference.’

这不是病态的死亡倒影。相反，这是波特曼将自己插入自然循环之中的方式。他说，这一切都是为了更新。“如果你承认无限，那么就没有终点，也没有起点。”波特曼从爱默生跳到康德，跳到哲学家的论点，所有的现实都是心想事成的。波特曼说：“拿出你的头脑，让你自己成为现实。”波特曼说，头脑是一匹美丽但失控的种马-“他很强壮，而且速度很快，但他在做什么呢？”-这需要一个骑师。“你把一个骑师放在你的脑子里，你把所有的精力都集中在你身上，它就会使你与众不同。”

The house is covered in swathes of green planting. Photography: Thomas Ibsen

房子里覆盖着大片的绿色植物。摄影：托马斯·易卜生

Entelechy II is the expression of all that energy, all of that long and exciting and beautiful life that Portman had, but directed, jockeyed. From his first ever commission, the renovation of the Fraternal Order of Eagles Building, to the AmericasMart development that kick-started Atlanta’s transformation into the country’s third-largest convention and trade centre, and to John Portman - Associates’ work deigning entire cities in China, his existence involved very little laurel-resting. He went to the office six days a week. Also, his focus on exploring his internal life was balanced by the fact that virtually his entire family worked with him.

Entelechy II是所有能量的表达，所有的漫长而令人兴奋和美丽的生命，波特曼有，但指导，竞争。从他的第一次委托，修缮老鹰会大厦，到美洲市场的发展，这开始了亚特兰大向美国第三大会议和贸易中心的转变，还有约翰·波特曼(JohnPortman)。

For Portman, architecture was essentially about enhancing the human experience, about giving a guy on the street a moment of protection, or exhilaration, or excitement, or simply an experience. ‘It is kind of like Candid Camera,’ he said of his observations of humanity. ‘When I’m in a house, when I’m in a restaurant, when I’m in a theatre, when I’m on the sidewalk, when I’m on the plaza, I’m observing people and their reactions to things,’ he said. How, then, given all of this control and all of this observation, did he avoid getting a God complex? ‘It’s just about asking, “Why am I here?”’ he said. ‘Why, why, why, why, why?’ Entelechy II is the closest Portman could have come to an answer. §

对波特曼来说，建筑本质上就是增强人类的体验，给街上的一个人一个保护的时刻，或者兴奋，或者仅仅是一种体验。他在谈到自己对人类的观察时说，这有点像一部直截了当的摄像机。他说：“当我在房子里，在餐馆里，在剧院里，当我在人行道上，当我在广场上，我在观察人们和他们对事物的反应。”那么，鉴于所有这些控制和所有这些观察，他如何避免得到一个上帝的情结？这只是问，“我为什么在这里？”他说。“为什么，为什么？”Entelechy II是波特曼能找到答案的最接近的人。§

A version of this story was originally featured in the December 2009 issue of Wallpaper (W*129)

本故事的版本最初是2009年12月壁纸问题（W*129）的特点。

在入口亭的露台上，波特曼的台面图，1986年在入口亭的露台上，波特曼的露台图，1986年。

主套间的起居室，两侧是两座空心柱的图书馆；左边的壁炉矗立着图腾，1987年由罗伯特·谢勒和埃吉迪奥·科斯坦蒂尼主套房的起居室组成，旁边是两座空心柱的图书馆；左边的壁炉架是图腾，1987年由罗伯特·谢勒和埃吉迪奥·科斯坦蒂尼合著，由罗伯特·谢勒和埃吉迪奥·科斯坦蒂尼合著。

一个庭院和一个游泳池分隔着东西方的亭子，一个庭院和一个游泳池分隔着东西方的亭子

米基，1986年，由波特曼，位于房子入口车道的南端，米基，1986年，由波特曼，位于房子入口车道的南端。