Interior Design Archives - Page 2 of 3

Cineluxe Showcase

Our in-depth looks at some of the most innovative, versatile, and just plain fun entertainment spaces in the world

achieving serenity

how an impossible private cinema came to bloom in the Palm Springs desert

“Serenity is a freshly minted 22,000 sq. ft. home nuzzling a golf course in Indian Wells, CA. Done in the kind of Mies-gone-wild style that’s become a signature look in expansive post-millennium west coast homes, it features a wide-open floorplan that’s as much about outdoors as indoors, and hinges its effect on a seamless flow between those two worlds. The whole is infused with a very contemporary sense of play, best evinced on the lower level, which gives off a distinctive carnival vibe, with guests free to stroll from the sports-car collection past a two-story rotating wine tower and onto an elaborate dance floor, then pass a Zen garden on their way to the private cinema—a cinema, by the way, that really shouldn’t exist. And yet there it is.” read more

secret cinema

tucked away in a manor house in the lush English countryside, this high-performance private theater proves to be something very much more than just an intriguing novelty

“It wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect this article to be all about how cleverly this room is hidden away. It’s not. Putting all the emphasis there would be doing the room, the home, the homeowners, and the team that whipped up this cool, gleaming gem of a theater a huge disservice because, while the whole ‘hidden away’ thing is definitely intriguing, leaning on it too hard would obscure that this is as much a serious cinema as a secret one.” read more

spanish treasure

an intense collaboration between the homeowners and their designer resulted in a cutting-edge Old World private cinema

“This is the story of a unique theater and of a unique collaboration—about how an all-star team had to muster all its expertise to get the square peg of a room to fit into the round hole of the area they had to work with without having any of the seams show. And about how they were able to turn a daunting number of liabilities into virtues, letting those challenges serve as inspiration to whip up a private cinema that dovetails neatly with the look of the rest of the home while exhibiting an appropriately theatrical flair that makes it a singular and dashing design statement of its own.” read more

rooms for improvement

the entertainment spaces in this Australian home are undeniably spectacular—but after a decade in use, they were ready for a major sonic makeover

“This story could have easily just been about the Theo Kalomirakis-designed Art Deco home cinema. Or it could have focused instead on the jawdropping one-of-a-kind entertainment area, with its discreet stage, ability to accommodate 250 guests, and epic views of Sydney Harbor. But there turned out to be an even bigger—though not quite as showy and obvious—story to be told, about how these kinds of high-end spaces have become so elaborate and flexible and the trends and technologies influencing and supporting them are evolving so quickly, that we’re now being presented with an unprecedented array of opportunities—but also the continual challenge of staying ahead of the curve.” read more

inside the ultimate
home entertainment space

this domestic entertainment complex includes not just one of the great home theaters but also a nightclub, a gaming arcade, and even a café

“Designer Theo Kalomirakis and acoustician Steve Haas have collaborated on a number of cost-no-object home theaters, but probably none of those efforts has been as ambitious, versatile, or well-realized as the Paradiso. Seventeen years in the making, this Southern California gem is actually an entire home-entertainment complex built around an Italianate piazza. The reference-quality 15-seat home theater doubles as a fully-fledged concert hall. The nightclub features a hydraulic stage and can handle anything from a rock band to a jazz group. Next door to the club resides an arcade, containing the homeowner’s extensive collection of pinball machines and video games. There’s even a g-force flight simulator.” read more

a tribeca trendsetter

the desire for a casual movie-watching space in this apartment’s main living area led to the creation of a high-performance hideaway theater

“Ed Gilmore casually bringing some shots of a project he’d done in Tribeca up on his computer monitor was a major “a-ha” moment for me. The first shot showed a stylish, obviously comfortable living area that also served as a billiards room, dining room, and kitchen. The second showed the same room transformed into a home entertainment space a lot of people would die for. That, a completely intuitive part of me screamed, perfectly represents the new paradigm. Others apparently agree with that conclusion because people just won’t leave Ed alone about the Tribeca space. Ironically, even he admits it’s not perfect—but it’s getting there, as the client invests more and more in turning what was initially a whim into a room that can blow a typical movie theater out of the water.” read more

luxury made easy

a prefabricated premium theater that not only met but exceeded the client’s high expectations

“Seeing the interest in dedicated theater rooms decline over the past few years, legendary designer Theo Kalomirakis has helped form Rayva, a company devoted to dramatically simplifying the process of designing, engineering, and installing high-end theaters. Rayva recently completed a signature installation in Westchester County, north of New York City, that’s meant to show that the company’s streamlined approach to theater design can yield a luxury result.” read more

music for art’s sake

the desire to have an expansive art collection on display made filling this Manhattan apartment with sumptuous sound a challenge

“The one inescapable truth of Manhattan real estate is that, no matter how prodigious the space or the wealth of resources at hand, getting what you want requires being a master of the art of compromise. The trick is making it all happen without feeling squeezed—space-wise, convenience-wise, performance-wise, pleasure-wise. Everything about Hudson Yards would be considered generous, even by Manhattan standards. A gleaming-new city within the city resting above the railroad yards in midtown, its opulent living spaces offer heart-of-the-island convenience, killer views, and, when it comes to square footage, a decent amount of room to roam. But there are limits.” read more

Luxury Made Easy

Showcase

Inside the Ultimate
Home Entertainment Space

Achieving Serenity

A Tribeca Trendsetter

A prefabricated premium theater that not only met but exceeded the client’s high expectations

by Michael Gaughn
December 19, 2019

Legendary designer Theo Kalomirakis not only created the concept of home theater but has been the standard-bearer for luxury home cinema for his entire career. His two best-selling coffeetable books—Private Theaters and Great Escapes—are filled with lavish theaters created in every imaginable style.

Seeing the interest in dedicated theater rooms decline over the past few years, Theo has helped form Rayva, a company devoted to dramatically simplifying the process of designing, engineering, and installing high-end theaters. Rayva recently completed a signature installation in Westchester County, north of New York City, that’s meant to show that the company’s streamlined approach to theater design can yield a luxury result.

I talked to Theo about some of the challenges and triumphs of creating this strikingly contemporary space.

Did this begin as a Rayva theater?

No. The client saw a custom theater I had designed for a friend of his and said, “Let’s do something similar for my house.” I told him, “We can come up with something based on one of the designs we’re developing for Rayva. I think there is one that would fit your house very well.”

The room was above the garage, in a new space, and it was ready for the theater. But it was perforated with windows on three sides. So I said, “It’s not good to put a home theater in a room with windows. The light creates a problem, and, more importantly, the sound will bounce off the glass.” He said, “I don’t mind if you want to cover the windows. It’s the garage. We don’t need to touch them from the outside. You can close them from inside.”

That was an interesting challenge. I wanted to cover the windows, but I wanted the client to still be able to have access to them. So, the windows dictated the design. And because Rayva panels are in increments of four feet, I could place one in front of a window and have it removable if access was needed.

I felt very vindicated that this process we’ve developed allows even difficult rooms to become theaters, because you don’t have to touch the structural elements in the room or the engineering elements. And, because of the flexibility of our design elements, we can deal with difficult design challenges.

What did the client tell you were his expectations for the room?

He just wanted to have a great theater. He said, “Cost is not the issue. I just would like to have the best technology, the best design, the best seats.” I shared with him brochures with Cineak seating. And, sure enough, he selected one of the best-looking seats and picked the softest, more plush leather, which is what he got.

And then we selected the carpet. Usually that happens at the end of the design process and the clients are overwhelmed with all the expenses of equipment and woodwork and everything. So, I automatically suggested just a plain grey industrial-quality nylon carpet that in a room like that would cost, at most, five, six thousand dollars. But I also showed him something that was plusher, like wool. He immediately went with the wool. He said, “Listen—I’m not going to use a nylon carpet. I spent so much money on the theater, I want the carpet to match the quality of the rest.”

I was trying to protect his budget, but clients who know what they want are different from ones who do things just because they want to save a penny here and a penny there. With such clients, I respect the focus on the ultimate quality rather than focusing on sticking to a certain budget.

photos | Phillip Ennis

Theo Kalomirakis:
A Personal History of Home Theater

What was the installation process like?

Rayva doesn’t do the actual installation, so when we started the project, we reached out to Nick Di Clemente from Elevated Integration. When Nick introduced himself to the client, he found out the client had additional needs. This was a newly renovated home and he needed whole-house audio as well. So Nick got the contract for the rest of the house, which he was very happy about.

What, for you, are some of the highlights of this space?

The client selected our Origami design. The good thing about the triangles of this design is that they allow flexibility of placement. We were able to use Wisdom Audio speakers—and there were lots of them and they’re big—without any conflicts with the room design.

This theater has a very different, outside-the-box design. In home theater, you expect to see columns and panels repeating themselves. You expect moldings that are gilded and wall panels that upholstered with brocade fabric. With Rayva, we tried to move away from that aesthetic because we wanted to change the perception of what a home theater can look like.

That’s why we bring in artists and architects that aren’t related to home theater to create the Rayva designs. With our guidance, their visions can be turned it into something that’s functional and can work with a variety of room sizes.

Also, this theater is designed with wall-to-wall acoustical treatments specified by Steve Haas’s company SH Acoustics. Steve worked hard to get the best possible distribution of acoustical treatments within the limitations of the design. When the theater was finished, he spent two days calibrating the Wisdom Audio speakers to the room specifications and made the theater sound unbelievable.

What was the client’s reaction when he saw the finished theater?

The client is very happy. He told me his kids practically live in that space.

Was there anything else you wanted to mention?

I want to tell you something—we put pictures of the theater on Houzz, where we can monitor which ones resonate with end-users. And we were surprised to find out that we got a lot of likes for the interior but got more likes for the marquee outside. Go figure! I didn’t take that as an insult but as an indication that people still relate to having a marquee outside a home theater. So, we will be creating a marquee as a Rayva product and will make it available as an accessory.

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: Star Gazing

Deschamps on Design | Star Gazing

“Design your own universe and control everything from brightness to color to timing within a millisecond with the flick of an app”

more Deschamps on Design

Creating with Light

Origins

Star ceilings have evolved from being the epitome of home theater kitsch to highly sophisticated, customizable, and tasteful additions to premium private viewing spaces

by Maria Deschamps
June 7, 2022

Fiber-optic ceilings were once so pervasive that they came to be seen as a tacky clichè and have long been out of favor in high-end home theaters. Overused and often just slapped on, they were, as home theater expert Theo Kalomirakis says, “the lazy man’s solution to ceiling design.” But star ceilings are coming back into favor with interior designers, thanks mainly to tremendous changes in the technology behind them.

Speaking from my own experience, most people planning a dedicated home theater now request a star ceiling. Perhaps it’s to counteract the claustrophobia of the COVID lockdown or maybe it’s because of the renewed interest in space travel. In any case, star gazing has always been cathartic. I think back to my first visit to Greece and seeing all the outdoor theaters, which took my breath away. According to Theo, people in Greece attend outdoor entertainments not so much because of the movie or spectacle that’s playing but because of the environment it’s being played in. Similarly, I often reminisce about my visit to the Pantheon in Rome and looking up into the beauty and majesty of its iconic dome with its open aperture at the top that looks directly out at the sky above.

When architect John Eberson started designing atmospheric movie palaces in the early 1920s, his concept was to bring the outdoors in. He started by simply painting clouds and stars on domed ceilings, which evolved into making the stars twinkle and using projection to give the impression the clouds were moving. It was entertaining just to be in his theaters and gaze up.

Star panels are the contemporary equivalent of that experience, consisting of thin strands of fiber-optic cable that carry light to each tiny star. The size, shape, and intensity of the light points determine the number of strands needed—anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand.

As for what’s new in star ceilings, customizable panel sizes and shapes are just the beginning. No more being limited to fixed options, no more big control boxes (which were huge compared to the small, sleek 3.5″ x 5.5″ ones today), no more heat, and no more noise. How about showing your horoscope signs, your favorite planets,

The star ceiling in the Great Hall of the Grand Rex theater, Paris, designed by John Eberson

shooting stars, or the entire Milky Way? Place each item where you want and decide what color you want it to be. Design your own universe, and control everything from brightness to color to timing within a millisecond with the flick of an app.

Speaking with Epixsky, a leading producer of fiber-optic star panels, I discovered their business has expanded tremendously—partly because they now design ceilings for the medical sector as a way to calm patients during medical or dental procedures. Their latest development is airbrushing custom designs onto panels. In a luxury private cinema, adding something like a contemporary family crest could help make the ceiling design exclusive.

The latest star ceilings are functional as well as decorative. Not only do they house and support the strands that carry the light, they can also act as an acoustic panel to absorb sound—which is perfect for a home theater ceiling! The panels can also be customized to fit additional recessed lights or ceiling speakers. The fabric used to cover them is acoustically transparent so the sound of speakers hidden behind them can be clear and concise, and you can choose fabric from a variety of colors and textures.

You can’t just tack one of these panels onto your ceiling, though, and expect it look integrated into the design of the room. The details around the panels need to be meticulously attended to. Framing the ceiling with coves of indirect lights is one approach. Creating outlines with moldings or linear LED strip lights is another. Adding movement to the design—a twinkle here and a shooting star there—can be a really subtle touch, while at the same time ensuring that the ceiling remains decorative and not a distraction or the focus of attention.

Authenticity in design is very important to me. I prefer to use items made by artisan craftsmen, natural materials, and original art instead of mass-produced synthetic materials and lazy trompe l’oeils. But since it would be prohibitive at best to have an indoor theater where you can actually look up at the night sky or that recreates the Pantheon’s oculus, opting for a sophisticated, customized star ceiling can take you almost all the way there, lighting up your home cinema with your own private universe.

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.

This rendering of one of Maria’s recent home theater designs features a fiber-optic ceiling with animated shooting stars

CLICK ON THE IMAGES TO ENLARGE

The oculus at the crest of the dome of the Roman Pantheon, shown in an 18th century painting

In the Service of the Senses

Next-wave integration firm OneButton focuses on creating the perfect environment, not pushing the buzzword tech

by Kirsten Nelson
May 31, 2022

In an overly wired, overly touchscreened, too much media stimulation world, sometimes the perfect antidote is actually more technology. This isn’t a “build your immunity” kind of thing. It’s a thoughtful engineering thing. When the electronic chaos around you is tamed by the right amount of analog consideration, suddenly bliss emerges.

To prove this scientific truth, I paid a visit to the east coast office of residential tech’s finest artisanal practitioners, OneButton. They know how to finesse the perfect blend of invisible technology and opulent electronic environmental augmentation. Anywhere on the scale of “I don’t want to see a single gadget in my home” up to “Please build a wall of sound and blinking lights in my media room,” this bicoastal integration firm can make it happen.

When I told Co-Founder Matt Emmi I’m writing about creating compelling sensory immersion in the home, including the human-centric lighting I first learned about in the OneButton studio, along with NFTs and art-world-centric large-scale media walls and beyond, he was immediately enthusiastic.

“Yes, all of that. I want more of that. That’s exactly what we want to do,” Emmi said. “We’re still looking for more people who want to turn one of their rooms into an art media wall. We haven’t found it in Manhattan yet, but I do think that’s definitely the future. That’s where we’re going.”

This is not to be mistaken for a desire to dive headlong into mainstream media’s depiction of “future home tech” being all about VR and curved monitors and the things you see at CES. On the contrary, Emmi said, he wants to talk about anything but those “meta cyberpunky things.”

He’s more interested in creating wonder in real life. “What I like about what we do is that it generally involves shared experiences and entertainment and art and ideas and expression,” he enthused. “That, to me, is fun. And VR and curved monitors are none of that.”

OneButton used shoji screens in the multilayered shading for this residence in 432 Park, NYC to help create an appropriate environment for works by artist Hiroshi Sujimoto

Matt Emmi

OneButton’s headquarters, located in a Greenpoint, Brooklyn loft

lounge photo by John Frattasi

OneButton’s headquarters, located in a Greenpoint, Brooklyn loft

lounge photo by John Frattasi

ALSO BY KIRSTEN NELSON

Natural Wonder

Your Home is Your Canvas

A Garden of Immersive Delights

So how do we get to his panacea of just the right amount of tech? Maybe it’s no surprise that it can be found in the artfully assembled rustic environs of OneButton’s historic loft headquarters in Brooklyn. Occupying a high floor in one of those waterfront buildings in Greenpoint where every film and television production company seems to be renting space, this band of artists and technologists was an early occupant of one of the last bastions of studio space in the area.

Years ago, the first time I set foot in this office and relaxed into a giant sectional sofa with a glass of kombucha (on tap! naturally), I had a revelation about how technology can actually be made more palatable to the tech averse. Back then, the major delineating factor that told me OneButton was redefining luxury was actually, appropriately enough, a button—or not a button, actually, a switch. It was a beautiful brass implement from Meljac, which charmingly enough looked like an ancient toggle switch but was in fact a multi-function magical device for controlling a contemporary home.

That was just the beginning. Since then, I’ve relied on visits to OneButton to find out what’s new in low-key high-tech living. Also, they keep pouring the kombucha, which is nice.

So, what was brewing besides the fermented beverages on my most recent visit? Here are the highlights, all of which I could write several more columns about and probably will:

If you’re going to display artwork on a flat panel, think about lighting it like actual artwork . . .

This was one of those moments the French call “frisson” when Emmi demonstrated this combination of video and lighting for me. Essentially, if you show artwork in a rectangle on the wall, and it’s only backlit by the display itself, it’s always going to look like a TV. But if you light it from the exterior as you would a work of art, it will take on an entirely new dimension—especially if you tune the lighting perfectly to work with the content and interior design, as OneButton does with Ketra. “It furthers the illusion that what you’re looking at is incidental light reflected, not direct light projected at you,” Emmi explained, and I was enthralled.

Speaking of making displays disappear . . .

“We’re moving TVs out of this realm of a thing you watch into something that adds to the ambiance and the experience of the space,” Emmi said. And then he produced two more magic tricks. First, the deceptively simple idea of displaying a digital swatch of wallpaper on a transparent OLED so that it matches the wall behind it perfectly. Then lighting it the right way so it’s believable.

Next, Emmi talked about how the new mega “media walls” from Samsung and LG “don’t really have an on or off state, except at the pixel level.” So if you want to create an ambient effect of flames undulating along the bottom of the display, “You’re only consuming as much energy as it’s outputting on the pixels. It’s not like an LCD screen where the backlight is on in full volume and white lets that light through while black is turning it off.” You’re only powering up the pixels that are flickering along the bottom—a fraction of the total usage, which makes the “off state” so much more vibrant than just a big blank rectangle.

OneButton is moving TVs out of the realm of a thing you watch into something that adds to the ambiance and the experience of a space

the variable color temperature of tunable lighting is used to enhance the impact of artist Dustin Yellin’s glass art works

sculpture photos by John Frattasi | video courtesy of Lutron

the variable color temperature of tunable lighting is used to enhance the impact of artist Dustin Yellin’s glass art works

sculpture photos by John Frattasi | video courtesy of Lutron

Lighting analog artwork is also better with tunable fixtures . . .

OneButton is working with a number of artists to light work in their studios to show pieces in their literal best light. And more collectors are going beyond the usual fixed lighting options to tunable lighting fixtures that will keep their work looking its best at all times. Glass works by Dustin Yellin, for example, appear more crystal clear with a bit of magenta glowing on them. This same customizable, ever-evolving lighting treatment can help to tell a more complete story of a work in art galleries and studios. For painter Theo Pinto, OneButton created a Ketra lighting system that will show collectors how a piece will look at any time of day or evening.

Obviously, a lot of great ideas came from this visit to OneButton, and I haven’t even gotten into the “invisible” theaters OneButton is putting into homes. Not to mention the firm’s award-winning work throughout a bespoke residence at the famous 432 Park, where shade control, immersive audio, and a dedicated projection gallery for a specific video art piece create a living complement to the owner’s collection of art works by Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Needless to say, the best is yet to come. “We’re so ready to do this,” Emmi said. “We have all of the ingredients. We have massive display walls, we have high-quality digital art. We have tunable lighting that can interplay with the display wall. Then we can really start interplaying these things and we have the opportunity to have a lot of fun and create amazing spaces.”

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.

Achieving Serenity

ACHIEVING SERENITY

How an impossible private cinema came to bloom in the Palm Springs desert

by Michael Gaughn
updated April 24, 2023

Serenity is a freshly minted 22,000 sq. ft. home nuzzling a golf course in Indian Wells, CA. Done in the kind of Mies-gone-wild style that’s become a signature look in expansive post-millennium west coast homes, it features a wide-open floorplan that’s as much about outdoors as indoors, and hinges its effect on a seamless flow between those two worlds.

The whole is infused with a very contemporary sense of play, best evinced on the lower level, which gives off a distinctive carnival vibe, with guests free to stroll from the sports-car collection past a two-story rotating wine tower and onto an elaborate dance floor, then pass a Zen garden on their way to the private cinema—a cinema, by the way, that really shouldn’t exist. And yet there it is.

Everything about Serenity, from broad strokes to light touches, is an effective extension and expression of the somewhat diametric dispositions of its owners—he a businessman with an engineering background, she an artist. And that melding of creativity and ingenuity, of art and technology, may be best realized in the theater, a space brimming with know-how, but all of it invisible, and all in the service of entertaining and being entertained.

photos | William MacCollum
video | Geoff Franklin, Be Film Inc.

CINELUXE SHOWCASE

right rear | the car collection & wine tower
foreground | the dance floor
left rear | the cinema

The couples’ expectations for the space were all reasonable enough—but seriously stretched the limits of what current tech can do. They wanted a theater with exceptional picture and sound where they could watch movies without distractions but that didn’t disrupt the no-boundaries flow of the rest of the home, allowing guests to dip in and out freely. They also wanted it to offer a rather generous view of the adjacent Zen garden so the room wouldn’t feel like an outlier in the home’s defining indoor/outdoor gestalt.

Most of the above goes well against the grain of the widely accepted criteria for creating a home cinema, dicta chiseled in stone, sacrosanct and inviolable:

The room must be sealed off, admitting no light or sound. Reflective hard surfaces like glass and metal are forbidden. There must be generous, unimpeded wall space for the placing of speakers for surround sound. Strict symmetry is king. And no Zen gardens.

left | the subterranean Zen garden with a glass-floor walkway on the main level, above, and an open-air courtyard glimpsed at the far end
right | the cinema

left | the subterranean Zen garden with an open-air courtyard glimpsed at the far end, and with a glass-floor walkway on the main level, above
right | the cinema

The Serenity theater checks none of those boxes. In fact, it seems to thumb its nose at the age-old practices. It’s not that the owners were deliberately trying to transgress—they just wanted what they wanted. And what they wanted meant breaking almost all the rules.

walls & bridges

The hardest request to honor was the seemingly contradictory desire to have a movie theater-quality experience while also keeping the room open to everything around it. While it is possible to create a wide-open space that can deliver decent enough picture and sound, the light and noise from beyond its perimeter will inevitably compromise performance. The solution was to employ two retractable curtain walls, which allow the space to function both as a dedicated theater and as a more casual media room that readily welcomes strolling passersby.

Those walls also helped address another significant problem. The gated community where Serenity rests only allows for single-story dwellings, but the owners wanted their entertainment spaces to exist separate from their living area on the main floor, so they dug down instead. But to fend off subterranean gloom, large courtyards were placed fore and aft of the surface level to provide generous sunshine.

That sunshine, as well as the artificial light from outside the theater, would easily wash out the image on the theater screen—an issue mostly resolved by closing the curtain walls. But what about being able to watch something when everything’s open, which was a big part of the ask? The traditional go-to would have been a projector/screen combo but, as Serenity integrator Jeff Williams relates, they would have needed a projector “the size of a small Volkswagen” to generate a picture bright enough to be seen in all that light. The answer was a 185-inch Samsung video wall, which creates a cinema-sized image viewable under just about any conditions.

Serenity is just one instance of the growing demand for flexible entertainment spaces that can achieve the picture and sound quality of a dedicated theater room while fitting into the more open flow of contemporary homes

design touches in the theater include dramatic uplighting between the seat rows, a bar area in the back, and custom-made Elite HTS love seats in red Valentino leather to match the color of the husband’s favorite Ferrari

PROJECT TEAM

architect | Mark Whipple AIA

project manager | Ty Harrison
Whipple Russell Architects

integrator | Jeff Williams
Jeff Williams Inc.

audio consultant | Robert Melendez
Triad Speakers

audio calibration | Chuck Back
Trinnov Audio

A bigger challenge was how to get a full-blown 41-channel Dolby Atmos surround system to achieve peak performance in a theater where almost all the wall space was off limits to speakers—and where two of the walls are just curtains. Sure, there was enough room to accommodate everything up in the soffits and ceiling—just. But for the Atmos experience to work, a decent number of the speakers need to be down at ear level. It took some deft high-tech sleight of hand to make that happen.

Of the 35 Triad speakers deployed, 19 were designated for ear-level listening—a statement that sounds counterintuitive as hell given the conditions. But the Trinnov Altitude processor tasked with juggling the theater’s sound includes a function that can create the impression of a speaker being heard from somewhere other than its physical location. It’s similar to the illusion of stereo, where sounds seem to come from an area between the speakers. Here, the sound, run through the Altitude, can be rejiggered to create a convincing sense of being at ear height.

And this was all accomplished without leaving any clues that almost the whole of the soffit and ceiling is crawling with gear. As project manager Ty Harrison relates, “The designer obviously knows, and the homeowner knows, but people coming in for the first time would never know that.”

The Altitude also gets most of the credit for the room being able to have impressive sound whether the walls are open or closed. The processor creates detailed profiles of the space in both sonic configurations and then uses them to compensate for any of the various gremlins that could compromise performance. The theater changes automatically to the appropriate soundscape whenever someone triggers the wall.

testify

The execution of the Serenity theater is unique, but the impulse behind it isn’t. Serenity is just one instance of the growing demand for flexible entertainment spaces that can achieve the picture and sound quality of a dedicated theater room while fitting into the more open flow of contemporary homes. That wasn’t possible until recently, and this room would have to rank as one of the best executions to date.

And it is was all done without making it look like a science project but instead a very organic part of a very ambitious and elaborate but still, in its way, minimalist design. “It was really important,” says Harrison, “to focus the visual on just the video wall and the atmosphere of the room rather than walking into, you know, Speaker Central.”

The room apparently serves its purpose well. The owners make it a point to do all their viewing there. According to Harrison, “They don’t even have a TV in their master bedroom. At the end of the day, they instead like to come down and unwind and watch a movie. That’s when they spend their most time together.”

The husband has made it part of another daily ritual as well. “At lunchtime,” says Williams, “he goes downstairs, makes a toasted cheese sandwich, and sits and watches The Golf Channel and one news broadcast. Religiously.”

As for whether Serenity measures up as a “true” home theater, Williams relates the time a fellow integrator drove from Scottsdale, four hours away, to show the room to a client: “The integrator, who does extremely high-end homes, said it was the best theater he had ever sat in.”

Taking all of the above into account leads to a simple and obvious conclusion: It’s now possible to dream big dreams confident they can be realized, completely and without compromise. The recently impossible is now very much possible.

Is Serenity the future? No—it’s the here and now.

photos | William MacCollum
video | Geoff Franklin, Be Film Inc.

a closer look

the speaker system

THE SOUND PROCESSING

THE HOME AUTOMATION

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.

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.

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. 2

Noah Kaplan—Bringing
Entertainment & Design
Together Again, Pt. 2

by Michael Gaughn

“One of the best companies we work with, Admit One, has engineers now to help customers choose things like their fabric, shades, and light fixtures so the tradespeople can go ahead and figure out how to integrate all that technology.”

click on the images to enlarge

The Josh AI Nano voice-activated system controller
top | placed within custom millwork
bottom | integrated within a Lutron home-automation keypad

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

March 30, 2022

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.

—M.G.

Since home theaters are the most technologically sophisticated room in many high-end residences, they’ve functioned as a kind of lab to get people used to tech and how to integrate it into the design of the rest of their environment.

I love what you just said because that was the intention of that space. The intentionality of a home theater space is generally managed by a design team. The integrator works in tandem with a home theater designer who handles all of those little details like the chairs, the fabrics, the paneling so the integrator can say, “Where can I put my technology? Cool.”

We’re starting to see integrators bringing people like designers in-house. One of the best companies we work with, Admit One, has an on-site interior designer, and they have engineers now to help customers choose things like their fabric, shades, and light fixtures so the tradespeople can go ahead and figure out how to integrate all that technology.

above | For this collaboration with Admit One Home Systems out of Edina, Minnesota, Leon created custom speakers that play off from the lighting in the skylight beams

The best firms know how to work in tandem with the other trades. It’s just a giant responsibility to put on an electrician to say, “I want all the light sockets to look this way, and I want you to choose the Lutron light socket and then choose the style and finish from the thousands of finishes available.” So we’re seeing this new interim position of design being an immense part of the conversation between clients, designers, and integrators.

The integrators of the world need to know the language of the designers and architects. And I think that’s an amazing trend. Like Josh AI just came out with the Nano—a beautiful little fixture that easily fits into spaces so designers can comfortably work with it.

How has the interest in having high-quality entertainment tech in spaces beyond the theater room played out with what you’re doing at Leon?

Home theaters really were a harbinger. So let’s apply that to the living room. At Leon, we call something like that “living space theater,” which is a mix of blended technology and oftentimes complementary design. We rely on interior designers because, by the time we’re involved with the interior, the designer is more involved than the architect, so we know whatever we do has to work with the interior-design intentions.

It’s really cool to actually see a design get introduced. We consider ourselves as much a design company as a speaker company, and a lot of our calls are about design consultations. So we’ve started bringing in architects and designers to work with us here on staff. So now we have an insider view.

above | This CEDIA Integrated Home of the Year from 2018 features Leon Profile Series side-mount speakers and a Media Décor Eclipse art lift

Do you find there are other companies that are basically on your wavelength that you can collaborate with?

We work with a lot of bespoke manufacturers that get it. Séura is a great example. I work very closely with the people on their team, like Gretchen Gilbertson. She has a very similar design belief to mine about how to bring technology into the house in a way that’s multifunctional. Number one, it has to be built properly so it can meet the technical specifications, but it also has to have the right style and quality to fit in a luxury home. She creates a tremendous palette of products.

Lutron is an amazing company that does a great job of not only creating perfect integration with things like with its Radio RA and Homeworks control systems but also has an immense portfolio of fixturing. It’s amazing how well they train people. They show integrators how to make the lighting and shades work perfectly but they also train their designers to be able to choose perfectly. So, for us, Lutron is always a design leader. They have an amazing asset catalog, they’re always up to date and modern, and they’re always making changes. You see Savant starting to make moves toward this, more on the lighting side, bringing in other disciplines to try to add shades or add lights. I see a lot of others working on this as well, so I would say it’s a trend for most.

But the hardest thing for a tech company is letting go. For me, I had to completely let go and say, “I want an actual architect to design the products. I want real interior designers to choose the fabrics.” So I brought them in and said, “What do you need us to do to make this conversation work for you?” They’re definitely not talking about frequency response—that’s my job. It’s like, I’m the plumber. They don’t care about what the cone material is on the woofer, but they absolutely care whether the cabinet is made of sustainably sourced black walnut.

Coming Soon: Part 3—Noah discusses some Leon projects that highlight where his company is and where it’s going

Part 1

Part 3

Part 4

For this collaboration with Admit One Home Systems out of Edina, Minnesota, Leon created custom speakers that play off from the lighting in the skylight beams

This CEDIA Integrated Home of the Year from 2018 features Leon Profile Series side-mount speakers and a Media Décor Eclipse art lift

Lutron’s Alisse lighting control, shown here in brushed brass, comes in 11 designer finishes

Noah Kaplan–Bringing Entertainment & Design Together Again, Pt. 1

Noah Kaplan—Bringing
Entertainment & Design
Together Again, Pt. 1

by Michael Gaughn

“In the ‘40s and ‘50s, you’d buy a console at a department store and it had your record player and your storage and your television in it. It was a piece of beautiful furniture that was a simple centerpiece of your home.”

the Marantz 2270 stereophonic receiver (1971)

above | Leon Speakers’ Edge Media Frame takes on a retro look in this custom design for the legendary Muscle Shoals recording studio in Sheffield, Alabama

below | Meridian’s DSP8000 XE speakers

making fixtures “pop” | rather than hide these Leon Detail Ultima speakers away, adding custom-made braided brass lattice grilles turns them into a distinctive design statement

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

March 9, 2022

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.

The heard-but-not-seen ethos has become so accepted that many people still reflexively react with horror at the idea of actually having components on view, no matter how beautifully made. But in our hyper-design-conscious age, it was all but inevitable that the vessels for image and sound would eventually find themselves being coaxed back out into the light. And two things in particular seem to have helped fuel that return: The vinyl revival and Apple.

For all its dubious aspects, vinyl deserves a lot of credit for getting a significant subset of the populace to reinvest in the whole ritual of music listening. The renewed appreciation for things like the design of album jackets, the tactile sensation of holding LPs, and the analog intricacy of turntables has opened the door for well designed and crafted items like speakers and amplifiers to be brought out of hiding and creatively put on display.

Meanwhile, Apple, during the Jobs era, took the cheap, inflexible, and all but inscrutable MP3 players the traditional electronics companies were trying to force on the public and reinvented them as the iPod, which, with its reassuring heft, intuitive operation, and undeniable sense of minimalist style (which owed an obvious debt to Mid Century design), radically changed how people thought about how they interact with entertainment.

Enter Noah Kaplan. As much an artist as an entrepreneur, as much musician and music lover as speaker maker, he’s 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).

—M.G.

Leon is known for being far more design conscious that most entertainment-technology companies. How did that come to be such an important part of what you do?

I always like to start with how design and technology used to actually work together. The architects and designers of the mid 20th century like Charles and Ray Eames and Mies van der Rohe created the furniture and the fixtures and even the technology. Or think about Dieter Rams, who designed all the products for Braun. These architects and designers were creating the styles of the time.

I always like to point to Henry Dreyfuss, who designed iconic stuff like the Bell desktop phone, Honeywell thermostat, and Polaroid Land camera. With the 20th Century Limited, he was responsible for everything from the logo to the dinnerware to the train engines.

That is a perfect example because it was designed from the creative direction of a single artist or a single designer. The reason Dieter Rams was so good was he created minimalism as a reaction to post-Victorianism. He later regretted that because he didn’t realize his designs would lead a change toward minimalism forever, even though it was an important step that got us away from adding too many details, which was really a result of pre-industrialism.

We went from an era where the technology was obscured by the design, to an era where technology and design were in almost perfect balance, to one where the tech was hidden so there was really no design.

I’m completely fascinated by this and by where we’re going. Back in the ‘40s and ‘50s, you’d buy a console at a department store and it had your record player and your storage and your television in it. It was a piece of beautiful furniture, maybe made of teak, that was a simple centerpiece of your home.

The market has moved away from that, which has created a really hard dynamic for integrators. You don’t ask an electrician or plumber to specify the fixtures, right? You don’t say, “Hey, while you’re at it—I need you to choose from the 15,000 options I have for a faucet.” You can’t be both the technician and the designer, so integrators constantly have to rely on other trades in these installations.

Integrators keep saying, “We always get called in last on a project.” And there’s a reason for that because there really isn’t an effective interface yet between the integrator and the interior designer or the architect—and, frankly, architects and designers don’t really want to know about all the technology. It’s not what they do. Just like a designer doesn’t want to pick the pipes for the plumbing—they want to pick the pretty parts at the end.

It doesn’t help that entertainment tech now derives from an engineering base compared to where it was, which was really design-based. And yet a lot of the people in our industry are amazing enthusiasts who appreciate the hell out of classic design. They can appreciate a beautiful vintage speaker that sounds amazing and can be the focal point of the home. Now fast-forward to where we went to more of a mass-consumption model where you no longer had people like Saul Marantz putting a wood case around a receiver, and it’s like having the contractor specify the products that might be visible in the room. And those things might end up in a living room, not tucked away in a side room.

When somebody decides “I want music in my living room,” we’re into a distributed-audio world, an integration world. We moved to invisible products because it’s impossible for a customer to decide from all the options for fitting a tower speaker into the living room. We moved to an era of discreet audio so the integrator could say, “Let’s get everything to blend in so we’re running the technology and creating the best performance we can.” But it all became devoid of design. An in-ceiling speaker is a great solution but it certainly isn’t a design element in the home.

What impact has all this had on your evolution and the evolution of Leon?

Since everybody loves small speakers that are hidden, as a designer I had to figure out new ways to hide technology in the space. Since the ‘80s, we’ve been looking at products manufactured overseas that are usually made from plastic and other cheap materials. But materials like that don’t really have a home in the luxury space. So vendors had to come up with either design compromises like, “OK, let’s hide all this stuff,” all the way to, “Hey, let’s make beautiful objects”—like Meridian. “Let’s make it a standout piece.”

above | Leon Speakers’ Edge Media Frame takes on a retro look in this custom design for the legendary Muscle Shoals recording studio in Sheffield, Alabama
below | Meridian’s DSP8000 XE speakers

We have to find a happy medium where the manufacturers use authentic materials that blend in with modern spaces—things like hardwoods or real metals or custom finishes. We also have to start thinking about collaborating with architects and designers. I finally reached the point where I said, “I’m cutting out the middle-man. I want the architect to design the next palette of products we’re going to build.”

And that’s really a return to design leadership—which is often the architect, who’s designing the overall vision, the aesthetic, of the space. But that means tons of other trades have to pipe in. The interior designer is going to have their vision. Us technologists, we’re going to have our vision. We know technology’s so important in the house, and we want it to feel like it fits in. And in a luxury space, it needs to be made of the same bespoke materials the homes are made of. So those conversations have to be led by designers and architects, to help reconnect those threads we lost.

Now that integrators are doing lighting and shades as well as sound and video, and there’s more interest in things like smart homes and wellness, I can’t imagine how a single tradesperson could choose the fixtures for all those elements. The existing solution is to make it as invisible as possible. But I feel our job is to rethink fixtures, and to retrain designers, architects, and integrators on what it means to create fixtures. We tend to say, “O, this light looks like this, so I want to match this light.” But you can enhance a style not only by matching but by complementing—having it stand out, be a pop of energy, a pop of color—something that excites a space.

It’s hard to get people to really care about industrial design because it’s not part of the mass consciousness. In the ’50s, there was huge awareness of movements like Populuxe, and people like Frank Lloyd Wright were treated like pop stars.

I know. We removed those figures—teams have replaced single people. Like, who’s designing the Ford Taurus? Come on, dude. But when it comes to sports, we’re rock stars. We can tell you a thousand athletes. We can tell you exactly when were their rookie years, what they wear, when they won. That kind of enthusiasm has to come back for design—but it has to come back in a new way. And I’m not sure what that way is going to be. You can already see some people who are design influencers. There are a lot of things on Instagram or TikTok about people who are true lovers of design who will open your eyes. You’ve got people searching the web for the coolest stuff—Cool Hunting is one of them. So there are super fans emerging, but the challenge is there. Like, I would love to know who’s designing the motorcycles. We used to.

In Part 2, Noah talks about how he has put his love for industrial design into practice at Leon

Noah Kaplan with his
c. 1958 Philco Predicta TV

PART 2

PART 3

PART 4

click on the images to enlarge

classic examples of Dieter Rams’ minimalist industrial design for Braun

above | the TP1 transistor radio & phonograph (1959)

below | the SK4 phonograph/radio console, dubbed “Snow White’s Coffin” (1956)

“Since the ‘80s, we’ve been looking at products manufactured overseas that are usually made from plastic and other chap materials. But materials like that don’t really have a home in the luxury space.”

“I feel our job is to rethink fixtures, and to retrain designers, architects, and integrators on what it means to create them.”

Interior Design

Cineluxe Showcase

Luxury Made Easy

Deschamps on Design: Star Gazing

In the Service of the Senses

Achieving Serenity

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. 2

Noah Kaplan–Bringing Entertainment & Design Together Again, Pt. 1

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