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Noah Kaplan–Bringing Entertainment & Design Together Again

Noah Kaplan—Bringing Entertainment & Design Together Again

A deep dive into how Kaplan and his company are at the forefront of the effort to make entertainment tech not just attractive but major statements in design

by Michael Gaughn
April 22, 2022

As much an artist as an entrepreneur, as much musician and music lover as speaker maker, Noah Kaplan has seen his business—Leon Speakers—grow rapidly, as both a presence and an influence, exactly because it’s the antithesis of an electronics behemoth. A creativity-driven craft operation that’s as much local as international, Leon is the speaker-company equivalent of a microbrewery. (No big surprise to learn, then, that Kaplan shepherds one of those as well).

But there’s little point in providing deep background in this intro since a lot about Leon emerges in the interview that follows. Just know that the artistic impulses that define and drive its efforts have synced up nicely with the larger movement to bring design back to home entertainment, making Leon one of the most significant forces in the push to make components not just visible but forms of expression, and, ideally, works of art.

PART 1

The Leon Speakers founder is a leading force in the movement to reintroduce a long lost sense of style into luxury home entertainment

“For decades, the prime directive when it comes to luxury home entertainment has been ‘hide it all away’—an edict that’s caused all the various gear purveyors to find ingenious ways to make everything from speakers to electronics to projectors virtually disappear. Problem is, it has also often led to unfortunate compromises in performance (although you’d never know it to look at the marketing). Maybe even more unfortunate, it’s resulted in some huge lost opportunities for making innovative design statements in the home.” read more

PART 2

The man behind Leon talks about the other companies helping to drive the movement to make entertainment tech fashionable again

PART 2

“In our previous conversation, Leon Speakers’ founder Noah Kaplan described how his efforts are grounded in the work of innovative mid-century industrial designers like Dieter Rams, who found ways to turn pieces of entertainment technology into compelling design statements. Picking up the ball again below, he discusses the contemporary companies that share his don’t-hide-the-gear approach to not just integrating but showcasing technology in the décor of design-conscious homes.” read more

PART 3

On translating the desire to bring design flare back to entertainment tech into real-world product

PART 3

“Having, in Part 1, discussed the movement to free entertainment technology from its anonymity by transforming it into distinctive design statements and, in Part 2, limning some of the companies that are helping propel that effort, Leon’s guiding spirit and tech-design evangelist here talks about his own contributions to the cause, citing examples of how he’s put his theories—and inspiration—into practice.” read more

PART 4

The interview concludes with a glimpse of a time to come when entertainment tech will once again fully embrace innovative design

“As we wrap things up, Leon Speakers‘ Noah Kaplan neatly brings things full circle, weaving together all the threads he laid out in the previous three installments. The focus here is primarily on the future—not just of Leon but of home entertainment in general as it continues to spread out, in increasingly sophisticated forms, throughout the home, and thanks to more nuanced and responsive technology and design, evolves from an often awkward add-on to an integral and stylish part of the domestic environment.'” read more

Noah Kaplan–Bringing Entertainment & Design Together Again, Pt. 4

Noah Kaplan—Bringing
Entertainment & Design
Together Again, Pt. 4

by Michael Gaughn

capturing the spirit of the ’70s, without the kitsch, at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio

a custom python-skin design for Wu-Tang Clan’s Raekwon “The Chef”

“We’ve got to show that technology companies today are as interested in how things look, how they’re sourced, how they make you feel,
and how they’re end-of-lifed”

The interview concludes with a glimpse of a time to come when entertainment tech will once again fully embrace innovative design

April 21, 2022

As we wrap things up, Leon Speakers‘ Noah Kaplan neatly brings things full circle, weaving together all the threads he laid out in the previous three installments. The focus here is primarily on the future—not just of Leon but of home entertainment in general as it continues to spread out, in increasingly sophisticated forms, throughout the home, and thanks to more nuanced and responsive technology and design, evolves from an often awkward add-on to an integral and stylish part of the domestic environment.

—M.G.

You mentioned that the mandate with Muscle Shoals was do to a ‘70s-based design. That era’s kind of dangerous because no matter how you approach it, it can quickly descend into kitsch. How do you avoid that when you’re approaching a style like that or something similar?

That’s where subtlety plays in. We always call it a drip. We don’t ever want to go into full IV mode. I’m super conscious of that when we’re designing. Our designers are working on stuff usually five to ten years, so we’re always designing for ten years on. We have some super crazy concepts, but we’re making sure it’s a very slow progression. So first let’s add new materials, then a color choice or a fabric choice. And then let’s add design options, like trim options. But in most cases still, especially in American design, we’re working with very subtle and simple styles.

Now, we do make sound sculptures that are full-scale expressions of ourselves. And the customer who wants a sound sculpture is somebody who loves art, so they want that piece to pop. Another customer might want a product that makes them feel something at the same time that it fits the right aesthetic of their home design, but they also don’t want it to yell at them. So it’s a tightrope still, giving people what they want while also pushing the boundaries just a little. Because you always know who the customers are who want you to totally trash boundaries and just create. But that’s three or four times a year compared to the ten thousand times a year when we create for the people who need stuff everyday.

Theo Kalomirakis always reminds me that during the pinnacle of his career, in the ‘90s, he had client after client who just wanted to play. And if he could sympathetically get them on the same wavelength with him, that they were going to be creative and were going to play, that’s when he did his best work. By the 2000s, those people started to go away. Most of his clients just wanted glorified screening rooms and it wasn’t creative anymore.

I like those words “sympathetic” and “play”—two of the things we try to find all the time now. If I get to get on the phone with a customer, which is rare, look out. We’re goin’ there. Like when we just did that thing for Raekwon, who wanted that python skin and so I’m finding that python skin. That’s what we want. That’s a desire. I had a conversation with a customer this week who’s moving to an amazing place in LA but has no idea what to put in there. She showed me with her phone, and she had not one piece of art. And so I’m, like, you wanna play?

So, like Theo, I’m always looking for that one person who wants to go and dig deep. Because I think intrinsically all people do. We’re ready to reconnect with a little bit more of our soul; we want to find something that makes us feel good. And what I really love about what Theo does—he’s creating an escape room, a playhouse. Sometimes we get too serious about stuff. It’s not that serious, and you should be allowed to make mistakes. You should be allowed to build something and then not even like it. We’ve built whole apartments with customers and, not because of us, they didn’t like it when it was done. And, you know what? No worries. Let’s find what you do like.

I feel like we have such a creative industry. All the people we work with are super creatives, and willing and able to start the conversation of, “Hey, I know that’s what you think you might want, but did you know?” Because a lot of people don’t have awareness. And here’s the scary thing: If I asked a hundred people to name five artists, I don’t think they could. Some people might say Van Gogh, but how about one that’s alive? If I asked them to name one architect, I’m not sure they would know. I don’t judge people for that. I just know there’s so much more depth out there than that. So like Theo, I’m always want to play with those thoughts as a way to find someone’s soul. And that’s a really deep, interesting way to design and build stuff for people. That’s what’s cool about architecture and art and design to me.

Let’s talk about the next 3 to 5 years. How do see things playing out, and how would you like to see things play out? What do you think are the trends?

I think the trend actually is going to be in learning—learning like how different trades interact with each other, because as technology infiltrates everything, we’re actually shifting really deeply into IT. And you hear a lot about wellness—about Kelvin lighting and how it affects your health and your mood. That’s a great trend. I want to work in an industry that makes you feel better, not worse. And so I love these multidisciplinary things happening.

I was on a call the other day with an integrator who was saying the usual thing of, “We’re always called in last, so we’ve got to train designers and architects to bring us in early.” And I said, “What have we got to train you on?” We have to start learning more about the terminology of architecture and design, the history of design. Through that, we’ll get to this next zone where design and technology are finally remarried. We’ve got to show that technology companies today are as interested in how things look, how they’re sourced, how they make you feel, and how they’re end-of-lifed. We talk often enough about how this can be a sustainable practice. It doesn’t have to be all about growth and this maniacal big, bigger, bigger.

The future will be more about the wellness of an overall space, which is super interesting to me. So I’m working closely with an architect out of Paris, Daniel Pouzet, who’s one of my favorite designers—a very naturalistic designer. And he’s really thinking about what is going to make the client’s life better through design. So I became obsessed with the idea of, if you see an object that makes sense to

Kaplan introduces a Leon Ente SoundTile speaker system created in collaboration with artist Mike Han

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

this sound sculpture, custom designed for an Ann Arbor, Michigan cafe, won a BORN award for its combination of functionality and aesthetics

Kaplan with Theo Kalomirakis

Theo Kalomirakis |
A Personal History of Home Theater

a sampling of Daniel Pouzet left | the Villas at the Nay Palad Hideaway in the Philippines right | the Nest Rest and the Swing Rest

you and resonates with you and makes you feel better, it’s going to add to your overall wellness, it’s going to relieve your stress. We can’t overlook how much stress we’ve all been under. And everyone’s spending so much time at home. That trend’s going to continue.

So what are we going to put our energy into? Are we just going to keep buying commodity things off Amazon? Probably for a few more years, but eventually we’re going to let all that stuff go and think about those few things we actually need or desire. So I’m thinking about everything from how the digital landscape is changing, about how we’re going to present NFTs and new art forms all the way to simple things like what materials can we build with that can be additively manufactured—printed on demand. We’re meeting with a company in Ireland to help us with additive manufacturing because I want to create a sustainable business that doesn’t have a giant environmental footprint.

The trend that makes me nervous is when I see conglomeration, which can hurt the spirit of design, because something that was super important to a founder can become unimportant to another group of people. So I hope there’s a move to independent businesses, creative companies flourishing, small, new entrepreneurs coming up—the next person who can inspire us to repropagate ourselves. But in terms of any trend toward one thing, we all know that the trend is moving in the direction of design.

Michael Gaughn—The Absolute Sound, The Perfect Vision, Wideband, Stereo Review, Sound & Vision, The Rayva Roundtable, marketing, product design, some theater designs, a couple TV shows, some commercials, and now this.

Deschamps on Design: Creating with Light

Deschamps on Design | Creating with Light

“Changing the color of lights changes the look of the room and in consequence can change your mood”

Recent innovations are taking residential lighting well beyond simple illumination, opening up dramatic new avenues for designing entertainment spaces

by Maria Deschamps
April 12, 2022

Lighting isn’t simply about illuminating spaces anymore; today, it’s much more than that. It’s now used as part of the design concept of a space, and the opportunities are endless. This was beautifully illustrated by this year’s Oscars, which brought a lot of attention to the stage at the Dolby Theater and the details of everything around it. As an interior designer, I must pay attention to details, and the lighting really stood out for me.

Designed with 5,000 linear feet of LED strip lights combined with 90,000 Swarovski crystals, the entire space was simply magical. The lighting heightened the impact of everyone and everything that happened on that stage. I have to applaud Jason Sherwood for his design. He certainly astonished me. It’s a TV broadcast I will never forget.

More and more, we are integrating technology in our homes, and lighting is becoming a big part of that. LED lighting has come a long way, making it easier to obtain a specific color and temperature—an option that didn’t exist just a few years ago.

There’s something inherently theatrical about these new types of lighting that make them a perfect fit for entertainment spaces, whether we’re talking about a dedicated home theater room or a more open area like a media or great room. Changing the color of lights changes the look of the room and in consequence can change your

mood. Since colored lighting can be intense, your first encounter can be similar to the feeling that comes over you when you get off an airplane in somewhere like Maui—your entire body is affected, you get a burst of enthusiasm, and you discover a new world.

Using color-changing LEDs is a quick and easy way to change the overall design and atmosphere in a room. In the past, designers used paint to freshen up an interior since it’s not expensive and can make a huge difference. Today, color-changing lighting is the new paint—a non-physical layer with infinite colors that can be changed in a millisecond.

We used to have to choose a light bulb with a static color temperature but today we can control the color and temperature with the brush of an app. These options open up great creative possibilities. You can change your ceiling color from white to blue, and all of a sudden you’re looking at the midnight sky. If you wash the walls in your gym with a nice green light, instantly you feel like you’re outdoors.

I have used LED strip lighting in every home theater I’ve designed since it was introduced. The excitement and drama projected from these strips arouses your emotions. A home theater is a space where we can afford to venture into new elements, and this new kind of lighting can be a necessary component. Using LED strips behind panels or walls or in a cove are logical locations for indirect lighting because they project a soft glow and can be used as a background or general light.

The options are endless, and exploring them is exciting! I’m currently engaged in renovating a commercial theater where for the first time I’ll be using LED strip lights (all, of course, color-changing) that are surface mounted. I must admit it’s a challenge, but working with experienced professionals has given me the knowledge and confidence to prepare for the project. I’m hoping in the future to be able to integrate Swarovski crystals with LED strips in a private theater and create the kind of dramatic impact I witnessed on the Oscars’ stage.

Maria Deschamps is a certified Interior Designer, IDC, NCIDQ, APDIQ and has been designing home theaters and media rooms since the year 2000. She also designs high-end residential, restaurant, and commercial spaces, and is a partner at TKG, the Theo Kalomirakis Group.

indirect color-changing LED light strips are hidden behind custom-designed acoustic panels to enhance the atmosphere in this private theater

The colors of the indirect LED lighting in the Global Wave Integration showroom in Burbank, California easily transition from natural daylight to very warm tones to cool blues

“You can change your ceiling color from white to blue, and all of a sudden you’re looking at the midnight sky”

Noah Kaplan–Bringing Entertainment & Design Together Again, Pt. 3

Noah Kaplan—Bringing
Entertainment & Design
Together Again, Pt. 3

by Michael Gaughn

“I’m working on product lines right now that will completely change the way we think about screens”

click on the images to enlarge

a sampling of Leon projects shown in a variety of design environments

On translating the desire to bring design flare back to entertainment tech into real-world product

April 13, 2022

Having, in Part 1, discussed the movement to free entertainment technology from its anonymity by transforming it into distinctive design statements and, in Part 2, limning some of the companies that are helping propel that effort, Leon’s guiding spirit and tech-design evangelist here talks about his own contributions to the cause, citing examples of how he’s put his theories—and inspiration—into practice.

—M.G.

Until recently, rooms and their functions had been relatively consistent, so interior design could afford to evolve slowly. But digital technology has really flipped that on its head. How do you manage that intersection of traditional design and constantly evolving tech?

The history of design and technology is really short, from about 1850 to 1890—the pre-Edison era to now. So you’re talking about a hundred and fifty years of really intense progress. And incredible technologies keep popping up—I couldn’t have predicted ten years ago that TV screens would be a hundred inches. When I’m talking to a designer, they’ll say, “Hey, the client wants a hundred-inch screen in the living room.” To me, that’s like saying, imagine you wanted a refrigerator in your living room. I’m not going to let you put that in without a cabinetmaker and without trim around it. So we’re trying to create ways where you can have authentic materiality around a product that’s a commodity. A screen is just the content now, whereas a Philco screen from 1950 was a furniture piece. It used to be that both the object and the content were important. The screen has become nothing but a black window, and our job as integrators is to make that thing sing and make it resonate with the space.

This reminds me of conversations I’ve had with Tim Sinnaeve from Barco about how flat panels used to be thought of as something anonymous that just hung on the wall when they’re not on, but how, just given their size, we need to completely rethink what their presence means in a room.

For instance, I design and create NFTs. We’re thinking about, “Where are we going to show them? O, wait, we already have amazing televisions and digital screens all over the house. Perfect. But are they artistic?” More and more, digital is going to become part of the normal vernacular of design, like where a luxury client will have a really broad NFT collection.

I’m working on product lines right now that will completely change the way we think about screens. Screens are a window. They’re an escape, they’re informational, and they have a lot of functionality. But, hell, they need a ton more design. Yves Béhar, who’s one of my favorite designers and creates for Herman Miller and other global brands, designed the Samsung Frame. And his first thing was, “This thing has to look good off.” That’s the job we all have now. And so that’s what’s cool about making parts that are discreet. But I’m imagining like even with an in-wall speaker, what if the fitting looked more beautiful? Or maybe it’s custom painted or made out of woven, braided brass or solid wood—whatever matches the style. I think it will be a slow introduction back to style, but a lot of vendors have to create tools, similar to Lutron, where you can easily show the vast array of styles, to help someone choose.

Is there one product you’ve created that best sums up everything we’ve been talking about?

One of our simplest products we do all this with, which is an everyday one for integrators, is the Edge Media Frame. I always hated hanging TVs on walls. I didn’t like the black screen, I didn’t like seeing down the side, I didn’t like that you could see the differentiation, I didn’t like the materials. Remember when TVs used to be, like, silver? It was painful.

With the Media Frame, we looked back to say, ‘What made a piece like this work with the home in the past?” The Edge is a simple way to frame, stylistically, and say, “Hey, instead of just seeing this black window, let’s put trim around it so you can’t see down the sides. Let’s clean up the edges. Let’s allow the customer to choose custom fabrics.” Instead of just seeing black metal or plastic, all of a sudden you’re seeing an explosion of color. People are using fabric now for the grilles on the soundbars. So they get to choose the fabric and the wood, and then, of course, they get to choose their TV and screen size—and now you can get to choose what’s on the screen. Right now, it’s just the Samsung Frame, but LG and Sony have their versions coming out that will enable the screen to become a player of images or art, of photography or NFTs or whatever you collect. To me that’s beautiful.

So our job as integrators is to paint a picture of a branded product that doesn’t feel store-bought. And now we’re talking about the exact marriage of design and technology, where multiple trades work together to make something seem beautiful and simple, because design, ultimately, is complexity solved. Our job as integrators, with something as complex as a media room, is to make the space feel comfortable and have nothing feel out of place.

Do you tend to design products with a specific style in mind?

Stylistically, I think a lot of people always picture really modern homes, and we’re always shown that most modernist home. But most people are a little more transitional about what they have. And it definitely changes from the Rockies to the coasts. What all our customers have in common is that they know what they love, they know what resonates, so they’re definitely design-conscious. Now, what kind of design? That is not for me to say. We have worked with designs that you would consider farmhouse all the way to super ultra Postmodern. So when I’m thinking about a period or style, what I’m looking at is the soul of the person. Because that’s what interests me about each house. That’s why I love building custom products for individuals, and that’s why we keep adding to these palettes of options. We learn from these people.

I was walking a house in Aspen and I was, like, “Whoa! We do not have anything that’s right for this house. We need to rethink everything. Look at how sharp the lines are, look at the contrast.” Right now, contrast is in. You’ll see houses totally clad in black, with warm wood—super-contrasty materials, super-long straight

Leon’s designs for the legendary Muscle Shoals recording studio in Sheffield, Alabama use authentic designs and materials from the ’70s to evoke the era

lines, gigantic windows—stuff that makes it really difficult for the designers and integrators to work with. So I look at each style and see how do we fit into that, and how do we create products that have flexible parameters to be able to do that?

Like when we had to design for Muscle Shoals, we had to go back to the ‘70s to help them. They just wanted stuff that was period-centric. So we found cloth from the era. We built out of materials from the times. We tried to make the screen look bent and curved. We made the speakers out of multiple tones of brown, something we would never do today. So you’ve got to keep up on your trends.

Coming Soon: Part 4—Looking into the near and distant future of designing entertainment tech

Noah Kaplan painting his portrait of Marvin Gaye entitled “What’s Going On?”

Part 1

Part 2

Part 4

the Samsung Frame TV wedded with Leon’s FrameBar soundbar

the Edge Media Frame is meant to overcome the bland anonymity of most video-display designs by creating a custom look that complements, rather than fights, a room’s décor

“What all our customers have in common is that they’re definitely design-conscious. Now, what kind of design? That is not for me to say.”

Leon’s designs for the legendary Muscle Shoals recording studio in Sheffield, Alabama use authentic designs and materials from the ’70s to evoke the era

A Garden of Immersive Delights

ALSO BY KIRSTEN NELSON

Natural Wonder

Your Home is Your Canvas

In the Service of the Senses

click on the images to enlarge

the Sound Advice space features a diverse collection of digital artwork, shown on Planar video displays and other media

Ed Gilmore’s midtown Manhattan showroom offers a both thrilling and soothing escape for the senses

by Kirsten Nelson
April 7, 2022

Certain spaces are more memorable because of what they make you forget. Outside, there might be a jumble of noise and visual clutter. But once you step inside, it’s all soft lighting, curated playlists, and video imagery so subtly stunning, it can be a soothing backdrop or a foreground showstopper, depending on the intention.

That’s how it feels to walk into one of Manhattan’s unforgettable high-end residential-technology hideaways, Gilmore’s Sound Advice. As I stepped into the sensorially refined environment envisioned and built by Ed Gilmore and his team of designers and manufacturer partners, I forgot my crazy commute and instantly remembered why the showroom is the scene of so much great conversation and innovation.

I was there to see a truly exotic specimen in the landscape of residential tech—the finest grade of pixel-perfect Planar LED video wall installed anywhere outside the factory at that exact moment. But there will be more released into the wild soon, especially with the rapid evolution of the trend I was also there to discuss: Video walls and large-scale video surfaces of every kind are moving into homes.

And it quickly made sense why this is happening. Casually strolling into the home theater room with Gilmore, I immediately felt the mood boost that only the shiniest, most amazing technology can provide. Glowing at only 30% of its brightness capacity, and shyly only displaying a 4K content stream when it could of course handle 8K without drama, the video wall was everything that defines luxury. It’s extremely high-performance, but it’s also extremely rare.

“It’s a unique type of experience,” Gilmore affirmed, and definitely one that is a generation ahead in terms of technology—and maybe if you want to be crass, also in terms of budget. Sure, it’s out of reach for most. “But for those who can, it’s here now.”

No motion artifacts to be detected, and “it’s completely impervious to ambient light,” Gilmore pointed out. “It’s non-reflective, unlike flat panels.” In short, you could put this anywhere. Which is what NFT collectors, gamers, sports fans, movie buffs, and even audiophiles (yes, if you like live music documentaries or you’re considering hosting livestreamed concerts in your home, potentially with a Steinway Spirio piano accompanying the scene, talk to Gilmore).

But this wasn’t a tech demo, this was a conversation in a beautiful room that happened to have a large direct-view LED wall in it, along with some cozy furniture and the perfect glow of carefully calibrated lighting. Also there was a LaserDisc of Pulp Fiction that caught my eye, and a copy of E.B. White’s Here Is New York on the table next to me, which I promptly picked up and obsessed over.

Clearly this was a room designed for people with taste. So we settled in for a fireside chat warmed by the glow of this new technology—which really did put out a little bit of heat if you got close to it, as Gilmore pointed out. Be sure to think about thermal management, he said, not to mention energy management: “There are three 20-amp circuits feeding this thing,” he noted with a wry grin.

At first, we did talk about all of the excitement around the display of massive and/or complex digital artworks on expansive architectural surfaces. Gilmore is installing a couple of those for a collector—one of the displays will be mounted on the ceiling, in fact. And just outside the room we were in, a couple of the other Planar displays in the space were rotating through artistic imagery in a variety of configurations. Digital artwork really is a thing now, and not just as a means of hiding the flat-panel display while it’s in “off” mode.

But then we got into the good stuff around all of that artwork. The home is now a digital canvas, expressing ideas and reflecting moods through curated blends of sound, video, and lighting—particularly human-centric lighting, which of course we had to talk about as the ultimate “wellness” option for homes. These are the emotional reasons people are looking for something new at home—to be comforted, uplifted, and also dazzled by the immersive possibilities of well-designed technology-enhanced spaces.

Gilmore talked about the delicate balance his designers and engineers have to strike in creating a home that not only looks good but makes you feel good. “We harness technology to its ultimate expression to provide great experiences for clients,” Gilmore noted. “You can’t commoditize that.” That’s because real human experience has always been the core of residential technology design. And specialists are starting to tap into new ways that the senses can be engaged (or soothed) by technology, to thrilling effect.

“I’ve never been more excited about our industry than right now—there’s so much potential,” Gilmore said. Because as he knows well, you have to be both an artist and an engineer to make a home resonate with real feeling.

Kirsten Nelson is a Brooklyn-based writer, speaker, event content producer, and podcast host who writes frequently for technology brands, integration firms, and experience design agencies. She was the editor of SCN magazine, and before that, co-launched Residential Systems. Kirsten is also a co-founder, editor, and writerly salon host of CreativeStack, a newsletter for the experience design community.

a next-generation 136-inch Planar video wall is the center of attention in Sound Advice’s home theater room

showroom photos & video |
John Frattasi, Gusto Multimedia

Ed Gilmore

“Digital artwork really is a thing now, and not just as a means of hiding the flat-panel display while it’s in ‘off’ mode.”

human-centric lighting transforms the feel of the showroom in the Steinway & Sons’ factory in Astoria, Queens

Beyond the Home Theater Box

also on Cineluxe

Your Home is Your Canvas

Roll Model | LG’s Rollable OLED TV

What Do You Do with a Room with a View?

C Seed and L-Acoustics launch a state-of-the-art home theater system—without the room

by Brent Butterworth
March 14, 2022

When home theater began, the dim images demanded dark surroundings and the analog audio technology couldn’t easily adapt to anything other than a relatively small, rectangular room. Even today, after countless technical revolutions in video and audio, most home theaters still follow the same pattern established three decades ago: A box-shaped space with two or three rows of chairs. At long last, two companies have joined forces to break free of this paradigm to deliver an extraordinary experience in sight and sound that takes viewers outside of the box.

The companies, not surprisingly, exist at the far reaches of the home theater industry. They’re C Seed, an Austrian company that specializes in outdoor TVs, and L-Acoustics, a renowned sound-reinforcement company making its first real foray into consumer audio. They’ve dubbed their project Maunakea.

Maunakea has two main components. One is C Seed’s unique M1 TV, which rises out of a floor (or the ground, or the deck of a yacht) and unfolds into a 165-inch screen. The other is L-Acoustics’ Island, a round, rotating seating unit that incorporates a full surround-sound system. While the system is flexible and can be adapted to numerous settings, the killer app for Maunakea is a living room adjacent to an outdoor terrace. The Island faces indoors, but at the touch of a button, it quietly and smoothly swivels to face outdoors, while the C Seed TV rises and unfolds into a screen comparable in size to that of a small commercial cinema.

I haven’t experienced Maunakea—but I was able to check out the C Seed M1 at the company’s Beverly Hills showroom and the Island about 30 miles away at L-Acoustics’ Westlake Village, California headquarters.

The C Seed showroom displays a 165-inch fixed screen indoors—which isn’t really what the technology was intended for but it works extremely well. The LED screen is bright enough to watch in direct sunlight.

The TV is made up of many tiny screens, each measuring about 6 by 5 inches—about the same size as the screen on an iPad Mini. Each screen is magnetically attached, so if one of them malfunctions it can easily be replaced. About 30 of the screens are combined in a module, and multiple modules make up the screen, which is available in sizes up to 301 inches diagonally. If you walk right up to the TV, you can see the seams between the individual screens, but if you back off about 6 feet, they become invisible and the C Seed TV’s picture looks like that of a high-quality 70-inch TV—just bigger and brighter.

The 4K HDR TV itself works much like a normal video display. It has HDMI inputs, and interfaces with home automation systems for touchscreen control. About 34 inches of space below the floor is required to house the TV’s mechanism. It takes about 30 seconds to rise out of the floor and another 45 seconds to unfold. The screen can swivel 180 degrees in any direction.

The L-Acoustics Island is designed for two people—although the entire lower surface is comfortably padded, so there’s no reason the kids couldn’t join the fun, too. The rim around the Island holds 18 speakers plus two subwoofers. Around the front and sides are 13 coaxial two-way speakers, each with a tweeter nestled inside an 8.5-inch woofer. Along the rear are five 6.5-inch coaxial speakers, and the space behind the seats houses two 18-inch woofers. All of the speaker drivers are based on designs used in L-Acoustics’ professional sound-reinforcement speakers. Those wishing to enjoy Dolby Atmos and DTS:X immersive sound can add L-Acoustics’ X4i speakers in the ceiling; typically, they’ll be covered with fabric. The Island is available in stock off-white and charcoal fabrics, or custom fabrics of the client’s choosing.

Although it may seem that a short, curved divider isn’t sonically suited to house a surround system, the way L-Acoustics has configured the system made me feel enveloped, as if I were hearing a full surround system. In fact, certain directional effects seem more pronounced than they might have in a standard home theater. Only rarely did I get the sense that speakers were built into the unit I was sitting in. It seemed more like they were concealed in the walls of the large L-Acoustics showroom.

The speaker amplifiers are housed in the space behind the seats. The system can be connected to StormAudio ISP Elite or Trinnov Altitude surround processors—the C Seed TV demo in Beverly Hills (which used a standard L-Acoustics speaker system) employed the former, while the Island demo at the L-Acoustics Westlake Village office employed the latter. The Beverly Hills demo sourced images from a Kaleidescape video server system.

While I regret that I haven’t had the chance to savor the full Maunakea experience, as no full installations have yet been completed, I did thoroughly enjoy what I saw and heard. The system is, of course, costly—while the price will depend on the specifics of the system and the complexity of the installation, about $1 million per system is a good ballpark figure. That means only a very few wealthy clients will get to enjoy Maunakea, but I have to imagine they’ll consider it money well spent.

Brent Butterworth has been a professional audio journalist since 1989 and was one of the first journalists ever to write about home theater and review home theater products. He is currently a senior staff writer at Wirecutter and editor of the SoundStage Solo headphone website, and previously served as editor-in-chief of Home Theater and Home Entertainment magazines, contributing technical editor for Sound & Vision magazine, and as marketing director for Dolby Laboratories.

The rotatable L-Acoustics Island, complete with an 18-speaker surround system, in front of the C Seed 165-inch LED TV.

click on the images to enlarge

design options for the L-Acoustics Island

Deschamps on Design: Origins

Deschamps on Design | Origins

“I not only loved movies.
I loved the experience of
moviegoing.”

Maria’s retail design work for Montréal Luminaire & Quincaillerie

Maria initiates her column on home entertainment design by tracing the path that led to her decision to specialize in theaters & media rooms

by Maria Deschamps
March 2, 2022

I’m an interior designer who focuses almost exclusively on home theaters and media rooms. Since that’s not a typical career path, I thought I’d begin this series of columns by describing the moments in my life that inspired me to take that journey. Those diverse experiences have given me a unique perspective on entertainment spaces—one I’m eager to share here going forward.

I was 11 when I decided I wanted to be a designer. It was one summer during my first trip to California, a breath of fresh air for an upstate New York girl.

I loved Hollywood and Disneyland, and especially enjoyed the Missions, the Danish town of Solvang, and the famous Madonna Inn. But Hearst Castle was the place where it really hit me. The immense entrance, the high opulent ceilings, the oversized chandeliers, the multiple rooms, the magnificent carpets and prominent artwork—everything was impressive!

I had so many questions: Who lived here? How much time and money does it take to build a home like this? How do they get the lights to work in that pool? The first thing I did after I returned home was draw a floorplan of my bedroom. I wanted to start designing right away.

At that time, we lived within walking distance of a movie theater, the Riviera in North Tonawanda, where I spent many Saturday afternoons. We would arrive early and I would absorb the design and architecture with my box of Cracker Jack in hand. I not only loved movies, I loved the experience of moviegoing.

Ever since that summer, I’ve paid attention to things like detail, lighting, space planning, and strategies for traffic flow. I’ve been inspired by architects throughout the United States and around the world, and have had the chance to travel across the US and to visit Central America, Europe, and Asia, where I’ve experienced some amazing spaces.

My education in San Francisco was an experience in itself. What better city to start building a foundation for a design career? After college at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, I began my career in Reno, NV but soon followed my heart to Montréal.

There, I focused on commercial design. I began as a pencil-pusher for a retail design firm, which gave me the basic footing for learning how to customize anything in an interior space. I went on to manage and direct design departments for three major international retailers. This allowed me to understand roll-outs, budgets, branding, and the importance of design impact and the environmental effect on consumers.

The turning point came when I designed my own dedicated home theater. That theater became my escape room. I was totally immersed in the environment and really appreciated and absorbed whatever I was viewing. I wanted to be able to design that same kind of environment for others. I wanted to design exclusive environments.

It was while I was submerging myself in home theater design that I discovered Theo Kalomirakis. I became an admirer and followed his work. We met a few years ago at the custom integrators trade show, CEDIA, and soon after decided to establish The Theo Kalomirakis Group (TKG). It’s an honor and pleasure to be part of TKG with both Theo and Steve Haas, who is a master in his specialty of acoustics. This is truly an exciting new venture.

I look forward to offering design insights here on new trends in home entertainment, including things like circadian lighting and video walls, as well as sharing experiences on my projects, which I hope will motivate and inspire your own ventures.

The Riviera Theater in
North Tonawanda, New York

The Roman pool at Hearst Castle

“The turning point came when I designed my own home theater.
That theater became my escape room.”

Theo Kalomirakis: A Personal History of Home Theater

The man who started it all offers an exclusive look at his career as the unrivaled master of home theater design

by Michael Gaughn
March 6, 2022

In the three-part interview gathered on this page, Theo provides a snapshot of each phase of his career, dipping into the past not so much to reminisce as to show the continuing relevance of the core ideas that have driven his designs. At a time when home theaters are going through a tremendous resurgence—especially at the highest end of the market—fueled largely by the pandemic-driven desire to have domestic retreats from the world, Theo’s efforts provide fertile ground for conceiving new ways to create unique and captivating movie-watching spaces within the home.

Part 1 | The 1980s

“Because he’s the guy who invented home theater and remains beyond doubt its preeminent designer, people tend to assume Theo Kalomirakis’ interest lies primarily or solely in the design side of things. And if you only know his reputation or his work but not his history, that’s a natural enough assumption to make.

“But digging a little deeper goes a long way toward explaining why, despite all the changes in technology, entertainment, and taste over the years, Theo’s theaters continue to be the most evocative and compelling expression of the idea of watching films at home. The explanation—which really isn’t a secret, just obscured by the dash and brilliance of his designs—is that everything he does springs from his unusually deep passion for everything movies.” read more

Part 2 | The 1990s

“The 1990s saw Theo Kalomirakis create and hone not just the style but all the various techniques that would forever define home theater design. And it all happened within his first few commissions—which is especially impressive when you realize that he leapt into the field with no formal training as an interior designer.

“It was the decade not just of his earliest work—which quickly established his reputation and caused him to be sought out by millionaires, billionaires, movie stars, sports figures, and business and political leaders—but of his first international commissions and his first coffeetable book, Private Theaters, which features, among other work, the Ziegfeld, Uptown, and Gold Coast theaters discussed here.” read more

Part 3 | 2000 to the Present

“Theo and I have agreed to disagree over how to approach the third part of this interview. I had wanted to focus on the theaters he’s created since the turn of the millennium, which include some of the most striking and innovative of his career, most of which have never been published and none of which have been collected in a book. But he was adamant that we should focus instead on his various efforts to create a broader-market brand for himself. I relented for two reasons: Because I knew he would make the subject compelling and because, as he rightly said, ‘Talking about projects is misleading regarding how my career developed, and I know my career better than anybody.'” read more

a sampling of Theo’s work

photos by Phillip Ennis and Randall Michleson

Theo’s second coffeetable book includes more about many of the theaters he discusses in the interviews, which set the standard for private cinema design

Theo Kalomirakis: A Personal History of Home Theater, Pt. 3

Theo Kalomirakis:
A Personal History of Home Theater, Pt. 3

related features

Theo Kalomirakis: A Personal History
of Home Theater, Pt. 1

Theo Kalomirakis: A Personal History
of Home Theater, Pt. 2

Theo Kalomirakis: A Personal History
of Home Theater—Complete

Theo’s Blue (above) and Broadway (below) home theater designs for Owens Corning

the Exquisite Theaters logo

a column grille for TK Living

The 2000s are mainly a story of Theo’s efforts to have his reputation resonate in the larger market beyond the home theater world

by Michael Gaughn
February 7, 2022

Theo and I have agreed to disagree over how to approach the third part of this interview. I had wanted to focus on the theaters he’s created since the turn of the millennium, which include some of the most striking and innovative of his career, most of which have never been published and none of which have been collected in a book. But he was adamant that we should focus instead on his various efforts to create a broader-market brand for himself. I relented for two reasons: Because I knew he would make the subject compelling and because, as he rightly said, “Talking about projects is misleading regarding how my career developed, and I know my career better than anybody.”

—M.G.

When did you first feel the urge, or need, to brand yourself in the larger market?

I began shifting my attention away from creating custom designs around 2000 because other designers were beginning to do home theaters, so that stopped being the exclusive territory of my company. But I had actually first come up with the idea of creating home theater products as a way to stay ahead of the game back at the start of the ‘90s with my first company, Theater Design Associates. Even though that effort turned out to be premature, I never abandoned the idea.

My dream was to create a category of pre-designed and pre-packaged theaters. Companies like Cinematech, Acoustic Innovations, and AcousticSmart have done that successfully within the AV industry but I wanted to reach out to the world beyond the industry. I found a way to do that with the help of large organizations such as Owens Corning, Disney, and IMAX, which had the means, name recognition, and brand awareness. They gave me the opportunity to access that larger market where my name was relatively obscure.

How do some of your other efforts like ESPN fit into all this?

Companies like ESPN, Hammacher Schlemmer, Henredon, and Roche Bobois approached me over the years to help them develop home theater-related products but there was always some obstacle. With ESPN, the product didn’t even make it out of the lab because it was too high-end. The electronics they were considering for the

entertainment console would have retailed for over $80,000, which would have extremely limited sales.

Has part of the problem been that the market wasn’t ready for what you were offering—that you were thinking well ahead of where the market was?

On the one hand, I think that was the problem. On the other, I think I was unrealistically optimistic, and I made mistakes. But I believe I now know what didn’t work with each of the partnerships.

With Owens Corning, they thought a home with a theater would be more attractive than one without, so they spent millions to develop a line of inexpensive, all-inclusive theaters. The builders they targeted weren’t the big, custom ones that do one or two large homes a year but the ones that build hundreds of homes a year. The biggest mistake we made—and I share the blame—was that we aimed at the lowest possible price for a theater—$40,000 for homes that sold for around $250,000. But we found out at the Atlanta Builders Show in 2000 that most of those homes only had two bedrooms. What self-respecting parent would kick their kids out of the second bedroom to put a theater in it? Owens Corning also offered the option of having the theater in the basement but that didn’t increase the market size enough.

Your next big collaboration was with Disney, but that wasn’t until a few years later, right?

That began in 2008 and went until 2011. A group of Disney executives came to a lecture I was giving to designers at the Pacific Design Center. They were looking for licensees to help them launch co-branded products for the luxury market under a new brand called the Disney Signature Collection. They told me they wanted to appeal to a more affluent segment of consumers who liked the idea of being associated with the Disney brand but “without the Mickey Mouse ears.” The other Signature licensees developed products such as fabrics and pottery, while I was offered the opportunity to develop a line of plug & play entertainment furniture that had the necessary electronics already built in.

We conducted numerous design meetings where the Disney team and I would sketch out and exchange ideas. We also spent months in China looking for factories to produce the furniture. Everybody opened their doors to Disney, which was fun to watch. That was a very creative period of my life. I was impressed by how organized and methodical they were about defining and developing a product.

As with Owens Corning, Disney wanted a bigger market than just the AV industry, and I related to that. We rented a showroom at the heart of the furniture market, in High Point, North Carolina, where we presented the collection to retailers. And we hired marketing directors from the industry who introduced the collection to all the major furniture stores.

At the time, it seemed like the collection was going to be a home run for you. Why do you think it didn’t catch on?

What we found out was something the furniture industry already knew—very few store owners want to deal with electronics. So most of them waited to see if other retailers would buy into it. They didn’t want to be first to stick their toe in a pool they weren’t very familiar with. As a result, Disney started losing interest and slowed down its marketing support. I think I was the last licensee to pull out. I realized then that even a strong brand isn’t enough to capture a new market.

Your next couple of projects seemed to keep you in China almost constantly for a couple of years.

I had met a lot of people while I was traveling there for Disney, including Stevie Ng, who is still a good friend. He was involved in the Chinese AV industry and knew about my efforts to develop pre-designed theaters. As the Disney business was winding down, he asked if I would be interested in designing theaters for his company, Alpha Technologies of Shanghai. We partnered with a strong AV dealer/distributor, Beijing AV Design, and created a company called Exquisite Theaters. We installed theaters in dealer showrooms in major cities throughout China.

Here I was again speaking to the press, inaugurating showrooms, and enjoying the experience while getting to know a new market. The theaters were meant to help sell design accessories and electronics but the problem was that the interiors required a lot of customization. Not living in China, it was hard for me to commit to working on too many of them. But the dealers didn’t seem to mind that much because the showrooms gave them a chance to give great home theater demonstrations and sell electronics.

When did you start designing IMAX theaters for the home market?

That was around that same time. Robb Report came to me and said, “We want the ultimate gift for this year to be an IMAX theater.” And IMAX said, “We’ll give you the equipment for the theater and see how the story does.” It actually created quite a stir, so IMAX decided to come up with a line of theaters, which they called IMAX Private Theatres. I worked with them to design the line, which we made available in the US but mainly in China. The theaters were spectacular but they were too expensive to sell very many. Still, it was thrilling to sit in one of them and be treated to the full-blown IMAX experience.

You did one for Seth MacFarlane, right?

Yes, that was the best IMAX theater I designed.

Is there anything you want to say about TK Living?

The major stops in my career were working with Owens Corning, Disney, and IMAX. TK Living, like Exquisite Theaters, was mainly an effort to sell home theater design accessories. To help customers create a design, I devised theater templates in Art Deco, traditional, and contemporary styles that they could use to apply different colors and finishes. Our most successful product was an extensive collection of acoustic fabrics, which my associate James Theobald still sells.

And that brings us to Rayva, which is your most recent effort to create a franchise.

Rayva is probably my final effort to create pre-designed theaters. From a product perspective, it is the most successful company I have worked with. Rayva has gotten wonderful support from its great chairman and our lead engineer, and from the dedicated team that still works for the company while I have moved to Greece. My only regret has been that we depended too much on the AV industry to sell the theaters. I believe the time has come to sell directly to end users but that requires a lot of money. Making that investment will reap huge rewards from what I and our industry have done so far for home theater. Roger Ebert wrote almost 25 years ago in the introduction to my first book, Private Theaters: “Henry Ford wanted to put a Model T in every garage. Theo Kalomirakis wants to put a theater in every home.” I was far from alone in making that happen, but Roger’s prophecy isn’t just a prophecy anymore.

A rendering of one of Theo’s designs for the IMAX Private Theatres line

click on the images to enlarge

(above) a sports-themed home theater design for ESPN, and (left) a media wall unit created for Roche Bobois

the invitation to the launch of the Disney Signature furniture collection, with examples from the Toccata and Symphony lines

a rendering of Seth MacFarlane’s IMAX home theater

Origami photos by Phillip Ennis

Rayva’s Origami theater design

Theo Kalomirakis: A Personal History of Home Theater, Pt. 2

Theo Kalomirakis:
A Personal History of Home Theater, Pt. 2

click on the images to enlarge

theater photos by Phillip Ennis

The box office (above) and foyer (below) for The Gold Coast

some of illustrator Phil Parks’ reinterpretations of posters for classic films, for Koontz’ Moonlight theater

Theo discusses the ’90s—the decade when he learned his craft, created his signature work, and gave birth to an entire industry

by Michael Gaughn
January 21, 2022

The 1990s saw Theo Kalomirakis create and hone not just the style but all the various techniques that would forever define home theater design. And it all happened within his first few commissions—which is especially impressive when you realize that he leapt into the field with no formal training as an interior designer.

It was the decade not just of his earliest work—which quickly established his reputation and caused him to be sought out by millionaires, billionaires, movie stars, sports figures, and business and political leaders—but of his first international commissions and his first coffeetable book, Private Theaters, which features, among other work, the Ziegfeld, Uptown, and Gold Coast theaters discussed below.

While much of Part 1 of our interview focused on the emerging technology that allowed Theo to indulge his passion for collecting and watching movies, the emphasis here is more on the blooming of his aesthetic, and on the succession of eager, generous clients who gave him the opportunity to introduce his exuberant showman’s flair into their homes.

—M.G.

When did you get your first commission to do a theater?

1989.

So, by the end of the ‘80s, people were starting to show a lot of interest but since you didn’t really have any training as a designer, you had to sort of learn on the job.

Exactly. I just was pushed to do it but I didn’t find my stride until the ‘90s. The first home theater was in the Hamptons. It was called The Sweet Potato. I did that one with help from industry people that used to do commercial theaters, because there was no such thing as custom integration then. At the end of the year, I left my art direction job at American Heritage and incorporated. The first day of Theater Design Associates was January 1, 1990.

So home theater really began at the beginning of 1990.

Before then, there was no such thing. I called the company Theater Design Associates because I wanted it to sound like there were a lot of people.

Besides the Sweet Potato, this other guy, Skip Bronson, who turned out to be a very good friend, said, “I want to have a theater in my house in West Hartford, Connecticut.” He drove down and saw my Roxy and became enamored with it. He said, “I want a lobby, I want a box office—I want everything.” So I did The Ritz for Skip, and immediately I got the Barry Knispel job—immediately—about 1992.

That’s the Ziegfeld, right?

Yes. That was an amazing learning experience because I was given an unlimited budget to do things no one does today—expensive millwork, expensive hand painting. I was able to work with a lunatic in furniture design, Frank Pollaro, whose work can be seen now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He does the most spectacular reproductions of antique Art Deco furniture. You cannot tell from the original. He was doing just millwork for the rest of the house and somehow we connected. I wanted to do something different, Barry wanted to do something different, Frank wanted to do something different.

You’ve said before that the best clients are the ones who have a sense of adventure or creativity or play, because they’re willing to experiment.

Absolutely. You feed off that. You can’t fall in love with someone that doesn’t love you back. It’s as simple as that. I was lucky enough in the beginning to bump into people that were my duplicates in thinking—who had the same kind of enthusiasm.

But also there was still an inherent thrill at that point in the idea of having a theater at home, so the clients were riding that wave as well.

We were explorers. We charted new territories.

Barry wanted an Art Deco theater for the Ziegfeld, so I got every Deco book I could get my hands on. And I realized I didn’t need to reinvent the wheel because there are actual visual references for everything that signifies that era. So I singled out elements from Art Deco landmarks and built a library of design elements that I synthesized in the theater. This is the theater that made me start saying that you don’t invent—you steal, but you steal creatively.

Was the Ziegfeld when you felt like you’d arrived at something?

Yes. That was absolutely the pinnacle of what I was trying to do. And it was a very abrupt rise to the top, to where you have control of your medium and you are given the opportunity to just do what’s in your mind.

With the next theater, which was The Uptown for Larry and Nora Kay in Toluca Lake, he wanted to do a lot of Deco elements from The Pantages [theater in Los Angeles]. They were available, because I had found the sources, but if I had cast them the way they are they would have been out of scale. So, in my pursuit to create details that were as good as the originals but in a scale that would fit in a theater, I found my way to what used to be called staff shops, which are the movie-studio workshops where they make set ornaments out of clay. I started going to the shop at Warner Brothers and then at 20th Century Fox, where I discovered molds. And I asked them to reproduce them in different scale because all these facilities have sculptors, and they were doing things that would fit the scale of a particular movie set.

The next theater was The Gold Coast, which I did for another incredible patron—Lloyd Wright, the nephew of Frank Lloyd Wright. It was just client after client after client that pushed me to reach out to do things that hadn’t been done before. That was the blessing of my career.

When was Dean Koontz?

That was towards the end of the nineties, but it started right away. Dean was one of my first clients but the project was huge.

Was that the biggest theater you had done to date?

Absolutely. And he was very intent on having me do a recreation of the Opera of Paris, and I loved it. He financed a trip to France, and I came back with 2,000 pictures and did drawings. There were not computers back then to do digital drawings, so it took forever. But then in the course of the first two years we shed the classical thing and

click on the image to enlarge

switched to Art Deco because his house developed slowly into a Deco house. And that’s when we veered towards Frank Lloyd Wright because he loved Wright.

Again, another client with unlimited money to put in millwork and detail and original art. He was so obsessed with this thing that he didn’t even want original posters in the theater, so he had an artist create wonderful interpretations. You would think instinctively, “What the hell are you doing recreating a poster for The Maltese Falcon or The African Queen?” First of all, we couldn’t have found all of them in three-sheet configuration, big posters. They’re perfect recreations of the era of the poster, not the original poster. They were another indication of a confluence of people who just adored movies.

How many seats were in the Koontz theater?

There were four rows—at least 16—about 20, 24. And there were balconies all around for additional seats but it was mostly for effect.

Is Seth MacFarlane’s theater bigger?

Of course. His has 40 seats.

Is that the biggest one you’ve done?

Ah, definitely.

The key differentiator between you and other designers seems to be that you create from your passion for watching and escaping into movies, which you share with your clients, while a lot of the other designers are just creating a room to watch movies in.

It could absolutely be the differentiator. I was working in conjunction with the clients, while a lot of other designers are separated from the client so while they create a room for watching movies, it’s a room the clients don’t really want. They do it because everybody has a theater. The disconnect is double—not only do many designers not do a real theater because they don’t have a passion to design it, the clients don’t have a passion for the room. The funny thing is that the demand for home theaters has exploded through the roof, but it’s lost its soul.

As you mentioned earlier, there needs to be that intense emotional bond between designer and client in order to spur something exceptional.

I would have never done anything if the clients hadn’t encouraged me. I would tell them stories about what it would be, and I had their rapt attention. “Yeah! Let’s do that.” I was like a pied piper, leading them on to something that was magical that they didn’t know how to express. They had it in them. They knew what they wanted. But I was able to articulate it for them via architecture.

They were all the same people—all the clients. They were all like children, in that they wanted to build movie palaces, they wanted to build paradise in their home. They wanted the ultimate escape, which is what I enjoy every night when I go to my own theater. When I’m there, I become Skip Bronson, Lloyd Wright, Dean Koontz, Larry Kay, Barry Knispel.

Coming Soon: Part 3—From 2000 to the Present

Theo’s hand drawing of his original conception for Dean Koontz’ home theater, inspired by the Opera of Paris. (Scroll down to see the complete original rendering.)

related features

Theo Kalomirakis | A Personal History
of Home Theater, Pt. 1

Theo Kalomirakis | A Personal History
of Home Theater, Pt. 3

Theo Kalomirakis | A Personal History
of Home Theater—Complete

an ebony cocktail-table top designed by Frank Pollaro

the original Opera of Paris concept for Dean Koontz’ theater evolved into this Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired Deco design

Theo’s second coffeetable book includes more about the Moonlight and the other theaters that set the standard for private cinema design

Home Theater

Noah Kaplan–Bringing Entertainment & Design Together Again

Noah Kaplan–Bringing Entertainment & Design Together Again, Pt. 4

Deschamps on Design: Creating with Light

Noah Kaplan–Bringing Entertainment & Design Together Again, Pt. 3

A Garden of Immersive Delights

Beyond the Home Theater Box

also on Cineluxe

Deschamps on Design: Origins

Theo Kalomirakis: A Personal History of Home Theater

Theo Kalomirakis: A Personal History of Home Theater, Pt. 3

Theo Kalomirakis: A Personal History of Home Theater, Pt. 2

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