Multi-Room Entertainment Systems Portfolio

 


Borough Market Penthouse

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The Challenge...

The apartment in the heart of London’s historic Borough Market was completely renovated to create a luxury duplex penthouse.

The location of the penthouse means that it has views over the north side of the Thames to rival those from the top of the Tate Modern. The unusual rotunda shape presented challenges and opportunities for some stunning modern design.

The first decision that architect Mark Sylvester of ICON Architects took was to invert the bedrooms and living space to capitalise on the views. The main living space, dining area and kitchen are on the top floor while the master bedroom, master en-suite and second bedroom and study are on the floor below.

As well as being an unusual shape, the main living space also has the stairs from the lower floor rising up about a third of the way across the room. Due to building regulations it wasn’t possible to create the stairway without a balustrade. However this would have been visually intrusive. The solution was to install a curved glass balustrade that maintained the feeling of space. To make a feature of the curved staircase, small low level stair lights were installed above the steps.

The ceiling was lowered in the main living space to reflect the shape of the room and to allow lighting and speakers to be concealed. The circular edge of the suspended ceiling is highlighted using click strip and downlighters have been positioned to highlight the architectural features and to provide ambient light.

Lighting Control

Clipsal C-Bus lighting control was used throughout to provide the control required. The stainless Reflection style switches were used as it was felt that these would best fit with the contemporary interior. One of the advantages of C-Bus is that it combines industrial grade dimming and switching with stylish designer switch plates.

The lighting control and design was central to the concept of the apartment from the start. Beyond the Invisible designed and installed the C-Bus lighting control, audio visual systems, and data networks, while the lighting was designed by Lighting Design International.

Scenes were set to reflect the activities in the room. To avoid too much reflection in the glass at night and make sure that the amazing nightscape outside could take centre stage the evening scenes were carefully adjusted to balance the interior and exterior light levels. Care was also taken to ensure that the space looked equally stunning when viewed from the dining area in the kitchen.

Any key on a Clipsal switch plate can be set to trigger a scene, dim an individual circuit of light or turn off a whole area or even the whole apartment. Unlike other systems the lighting designer isn’t limited to a set number of scenes in an area.

Home cinema

It was decided that the occupier might eventually tire of the view so would need the latest in home entertainment. It was equally important the entertainment systems didn’t detract from the stunning location and interior.

The living room incorporates a plasma screen concealed behind sliding doors. The cabinetry design had to be carefully designed to follow the curvature of the walls while blending into the rest of the décor. When closed the cabinetry looks like stylish storage, when open the full glory of the 61” plasma screen is revealed. To complement the screen, 5.1 surround sound is provided via in-ceiling Speakercraft Aim8 Five speakers matched with a REL Strata 5 subwoofer concealed in the cabinetry. The cinema is powered by a Yamaha cinema receiver and a DVD player provides the source. Both are also located in the cabinetry and the whole system controlled by a simple to use Universal Remote remote control.

The entertainment is provided in the other rooms via a Speakercraft six source, six zone multi-room entertainment system. A 32” LCD TV was flush mounted in the kitchen for early morning news watching and a 23” TV was installed in the Master Bedroom. So no one need ever miss anything a Tilevision 17” waterproof TV was installed in the master en-suite bathroom. In-ceiling speakers were installed throughout the apartment.

Rather than have CDs clutter up the clean interior all the music is stored on a 4 output Marantz hard disk music server. Music can be selected on any screen in the apartment, including the waterproof bathroom TV.

Award Winner

This project won the award for ‘Best Home Cinema under £20,000’ in the 2007 CEDIA awards.

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