Designed for a stunning and fully-integrated contemporary home which is located in Highgate cemetery, the winner of the Home Sweet Home Cinema category of this year’s Crestron UK Integration Awards is an audio-visual system which could indeed wake the dead!
Installed by SMC, the system was designed for a client who, having lived on the Highgate Cemetery site for a number of years and with his great, great grandfather buried only a short distant from the house, dreamt of creating a property that reflected his character and challenged conventional ways of thinking. His vision was to build the most amazing modern structure, echoing the industrial nature of the building that stood before, on what is arguably one of the most remarkable sites in London. And so, an ultra modern building rose from the ground, surrounded by 19th Century graves.
With a passion for hi-fidelity music, the homeowner wanted the property’s home cinema to be as cutting edge as its modernist exterior. SMC were given the challenge of installing the very best system, within what was an acoustically challenging space, delivering a fully integrated audio-visual solution, driven from Crestron touch screen control.
The resulting 7.1 surround sound cinema system, which is located in the property’s basement, features Meridian front, rear and side speakers and a Meridian projector, which is housed within the ceiling and activated by a single touch of the Crestron control system. Top of the range Meridian speakers and an 800 series player ensure that the ultimate sound experience continues up in the first floor living room; elsewhere Kef ceiling speakers complete the multi-room audio system.
Lighting plays a major part in the overall design of the building and both natural and artificial light sources are controlled via a Berker EIB system, interfacing with Crestron touch screens. Automated blinds have been installed throughout the first and second floors. The kitchen is unusually located on the top floor of the property and, at the touch of a button, the glass roof slides away, opening the room to the cemetery below and allowing for extensive views across the city. Crestron wireless TPMC-8X touch screens provide integrated control of music, video, lighting, blinds, and CCTV. Incredibly thin and compact, the TPMC-8X is brilliantly designed to provide a powerful mobile control solution that's easy to hold and intuitive to use, delivering a 2-way wireless control solution with blazingly fast performance and native capabilities for browsing the Internet, streaming multimedia, and much more.
Yes, this unique property may be minimalist in concept but it is certainly packed full of the very latest in home automation technology and boasts one of the finest, and now award-winning, Crestron-controlled home cinema systems in the world, which the homeowner can enjoy to full capacity without risk of disturbing the neighbours!