Sky’s the Limit
Delighting in the details – how to make a technology savvy house feel not so.
BAV completed a soup to nuts lighting and audio/visual penthouse installation in a new oceanfront luxury condominium that boasts sweeping views of both Honolulu and the Pacific. With this project, aesthetics and how the components blended into the environment were just as important as any of the technologies employed.
One of the main A/V components is also one of the living room's key design elements: a 65-inch Panasonic plasma HDTV mounted between what looks like a matching pair of framed pictures. However, flanking the TV aren't pictures but rather a pair of Artcoustic full-range on-wall speakers, sheathed in eye-catching — and swappable — fabric covers. Color-changing LED light bars from Illuminaire are mounted behind the speakers to produce an ambient light effect.
The surround speakers are "invisible" models from Stealth Acoustics that are installed like a drywall patch. The surface of the speaker is actually an active diaphragm that comes pre-primed. Once the speakers are installed, you simply paint over them.
The owner's painstaking attention to detail can be seen in construction of the TV wall and the media console beneath the plasma. The speakers, plasma TV, and media cabinet are all sitting in a 7.5-inch reveal in the wall. A carefully measured channel was cut around each object. Originally, the wall was just standard sheetrock, but that was ripped out and replaced with QuietRock, an acoustically insulated drywall that keeps sound from being transferred into the adjacent bedroom. Prior to the QuietRock's installation, the wall was faced with 3/4-inch marine-grade plywood, which provides additional acoustic insulation and the extra structural support needed to hold the cabinet. After the wall was refinished, a birch-ply baffle — the structure around the TV and speakers — was built "to provide the straightness and precision that was needed.
The birch media console, along with some of the other furniture, was designed especially for the project by Blueprint in collaboration with Philpotts and Associates. The owner wanted to be able to unplug or swap out gear without creating a mess; accordingly, the console's shelves were built so they can be pulled out or rotated, and extra cabling was run so there's enough clearance for components to be removed or installed. BAV spent a lot of time on the layout, addressing everything from ventilation to cable management to labeling.
One of the biggest challenges turned out to be the lighting so the entire penthouse was refitted with a wired/wireless Lutron Homeworks Series 4 lighting control system, which integrates with MechoShade motorized blackout and decorative shades in every room. BAV created a three-gang assembly comprised of two Lutron keypads and a fan control.
Blueprint AV also created macros for various lighting themes. There are scenes for highlighting the art pieces, there's a dining-room preset, and there's a TV-viewing preset. The rest of the buttons on the keypad are used to control individual circuits.
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