Imagine a bitter cold Chicagoland evening. Not a difficult task. Now picture yourself in the great room of your dream mansion, the one you bought with the lottery money, or the inheritance or the killing in the market.
You`re no regular Joe anymore. Your bills may be crisp, but you`ve got style and class. Your taste and decor is hunt-club traditional. Except for Junior`s acid-green T-shirt, before you lies a scene straight out of Dickens or Hardy or Ralph Lauren. Everyone is gathered around a crackling fire in the hearth. The kids suggest making popcorn and breaking out a movie-”The Wizard of Oz.” But is there any room in this picture for 20th Century fun? Not to worry.
You push a button on the solid brass remote, heretofore practically invisible among an array of tasteful doodads. Suddenly the platform beneath the sofa pivots 90 degrees, and at the same time, a big screen and projector drop from their hidden compartments in the ceiling. The paneled cherry doors on a wall of custom cabinet work swing open, revealing the gleaming guts of your audio-video system. The lights automatically dim as you break out the videodisc. You`re not in Olde England, or for that matter, Illinois, anymore.
In today`s world of technology, the show begins even before the show begins.
”It`s black box magic,” says Mike Crouch, vice president of engineering for Audio Video Craftsmen, Inc., Barrington. Along with AVC president Bill Doree, Crouch is discussing a pushbutton pivoting-floor design with a customer.
”It`s not a problem,” says Doree. ”With the push of a button, anything can happen. Fortunately, we have clients who say okay.”
”A 10-foot screen creates a `movie.` (Today`s audio-video technology) is an entertainment device that`s capable of lifting people above the humdrum,” says Art Morganstein, president of Media Cool, Inc., in Evanston, another custom electronic design firm.
And if you have the bucks, you can lift yourself quite high.
AVC does custom projects that range upwards from just a few thousand dollars, but the average price of the systems they design is approximately $40,000, according to Crouch and Doree. Their customers, like those of other area AV consultants, are ”mostly upper-end business people, with busy lifestyles whose homes are set up for entertaining. They want their whole house to come alive for entertaining,” says Doree
And, according to Morganstein, whose projects average $20,000, they don`t suffer any buyers` remorse.
Yet, despite a willingness to spend big without guilt, most in the luxury market want electronic equipment that when not in use is out of sight, out of mind.
”Most people don`t want to see the equipment, with a few exceptions,”
says Brad Alves, a manager in the custom design department of Columbia Audio/ Video in Highland Park. ”Bang & Olufson, for instance. You buy that to see it.”
Says Doree, ”The Wynstone upscale Barrington development) suburban crowd seems to want it hidden away. Downtown people want it all for show. They`re more into making it a design element, with brass and chrome plating (of components).”
On the other hand, Morganstein finds classic, basic black components are what his clients want.
But, from the components themselves to multi-room, multi-source systems, surround-sound home theaters and beautiful custom cabinet work, the custom electronic designers stress the importance for coordinating their efforts and their client`s wishes early in the design stages with architects, interior designers and cabinet makers.
That cooperation is especially crucial in the more elaborate systems, so walls don`t have to be damaged, once papered or plastered, for the placement of speakers and wires. These systems (AVC uses a/d/s, Soundstream and Audio Access) lend themselves exceptionally to the marriage of high style and high tech, since they eliminate the need for separate electronic components in every room where you want to access music and video.
If you`re in the dining room and want to hear the CD player in the living room, just push a button on your wall-mounted controls. Exercising and want to see what the kids are watching in the media room? Push a button and there on the spa`s mini-TV you`ll get the picture.
You can even have speakers in your pool for underwater listening while you do your laps, says Morganstein. Or speakers in the garden that are dead ringers for boulders, says Doree.
Back inside the house, unobtrusive wall speakers and control panels can be painted, papered or draped in fabric to fade into the background.
”I don`t know what women have against speakers, but women want them in the walls,” says Morganstein.
But if you opt for bookshelf speakers, Doree and Crouch explain, cabinet casings can be customized to fit the decor, too, be your choice pickled oak or black lacquer.
Perhaps the ultimate job of speaker concealment was brought off in a North Shore bathroom, that `90s nerve control center, by Morganstein. The clients` retreat was totally covered with mirrors, creating a dizzying
”visceral effect,” says Morganstein. Speakers were fitted into the walls and slotted mirrors affixed to them. ”You couldn`t see them at all,” he says.
In another North Shore home, where the $25,000 basement audio-video system was designed by Alves of Columbia, the speakers are painted a glossy black, redering them invisible against the black walls and ceiling. Yet these rear surround-sound speakers by a/d/s provide the type of audio usually only found in commercial theaters.
Bright blue, red and purple tones enliven the room and give it an air of playfulness, while the leather banquette and a trio of tables offer the accouterments of a plush lounge. The harmon kardon front video projector is housed in a matching fourth table, which also shelters a Miller & Kriesel subwoofer.
The oversized screen is a design element of the room, fitted into a glass block wall shot through with neon tubes, but the rest of the system, a Bang & Olufson Masterlink audio system and JVC video recorder, is housed in an adjoining alcove. Primary-colored artwork of circus scenes and exercise equipment help round out the feel of play.
Neon tubes running in a grid pattern across audio-video cabinets play a part in the media room of one of Morganstein`s favorite jobs. In this Gold Coast townhome, he explains, the theme of squares criss-crosses the walls in alternating blocks of orange-colored African teak and piano-black lacquer. A sofa fitted to the room`s bay window provides seating.
”He really went for it,” says Morganstein.
Cheery was the wood of choice for a low grouping of cabinets spanning the media room wall in a northwest suburban home done by AVC. Fronted with black fabric, they perfectly match the room`s existing woodwork as well as the nearby kitchen cabinets. Housed inside are a 525-watt hi-fi with AM/FM tuner, compact disc player and tape deck, two super VHS VCRs and a laserdisc player. The couple who own the home, says Doree, thought ahead about this room`s function as a media center and so no major design elements of the room needed to be changed. A fireplace provides warmth to the left of the media wall and ceiling lights controlled by dimmers don`t interfere with the screen`s picture.
”They wanted the ultimate in concealment and inconspicuousness,” says Doree. Consequently, their 10-foot diagonal video projector is aimed at a motorized screen that drops down from a niche below the room`s crown molding. When the screen is not in use, the focal point of the wall above the cabinets is a graceful Oriental screen.
Perhaps the epitome of the virtually invisible system, and the best of the cabinet craftsman`s art, was achieved in a Gothic Lake Forest mansion where the audio-video system was designed by Alves. A portion of the room`s intricate paneling was retooled so it lifts away, revealing niches in the walls that house the components. With the doors closed, you`d never know the room had been touched since first designed.
In other designs Alves has worked on, master bedrooms appear ordinary, but turn special when movie projectors rise on lifts located in what appear to be chests at the foot of the beds.
Yet the spectacle of a dazzling audio-video system openly displayed at work is an option of good design too. In a Michigan Avenue high-rise, Doree and Crouch are completing a system, with the owner`s interior designer, that will shine brilliantly whether on display or not-a case of having your cake and eating it, too.
When completed, the living room`s white lacquer cabinets will serve a dual function, in one capacity displaying fine collectibles. When motorized doors are opened with the push of a button, the room gets a totally different look. Revealed will be the pictures on three TVs-one 35-inch and two 20-inch. The stereo components are chrome-plated, a design option offered by a/d/s to customize any brand component, says Doree.
”The owner is making a statement with this system,” he says. Another case of black box magic, says Crouch.
But that`s not all. As planned in this $70,000 job, the library gets a 27-inch TV, the home`s brass-plated main audio equipment and stereo surround- sound. In the master bedroom, oak cabinets with a lavender stain has leaded crystal doors which pocket back to reveal a 46-inch TV.
Despite the glitter and luxe, though, there`s also room in this high-end market for pure simplicity of function-places where musical perfection can be sought in a world where our ears are assaulted at every turn.
Morganstein says he persuaded at least one customer, an opera-loving options trader, to set aside a ”master`s room,” a place used just for the appreciation of music with nothing extrenuous to district the listener, in spite of the client`s designer`s objections. A chair midroom and speakers strategically placed standing away from the walls are the only essentials.
So keep on dreaming and buying those lottery tickets, for magical escapes, after all, seem to be America`s dream. And if you want to go over the rainbow, via Olde England, there`s no reason not to do it in surround-sound.
