I often get called to meet with prospective clients by my dealers and never know if they will decide to work with me or not. This story starts a year and a half ago when I drove 2 hours south to meet with my dealer, a designer and their client to discuss their theater. In the discussion I went through my typical question and answer session which is the only way to find out what they really want. The room was on the blue prints as basically 21' x 20' x 13' with the equipment room one room over. This was a huge 20,000 sq ft home on the intercostal in Miami on 4 acres. The budget never came up but the concept of very high quality with value did. They were not cutting any corners in this home but they did not want to be taken advantage of. After describing many of the issues that might arise if we did not pay careful attention to a variety of things, the clients seemed to feel that they could trust me and made notes on many of my preliminary suggestions.
I hadn't heard anything from them in a year and a half and when I checked with the dealer I was told that they were quite a way out before we needed to get together. Several days ago I received a call from the client asking me to visit the job site as he was getting very close to building out the walls of the space and making expensive decisions on windows. He didn't want the builder to do anything without my input so the time was at hand for me to get involved.
I collected my notes of the meeting and went to see what his concerns were to provide the best advice I could for now. Upon arrival I was awed by the scale of the project. It looked like a hotel going up. I went to the builders trailer where I met the client and builder to start our discussion. The plans were posted on the walls and covered much of the space. This was going to be a spectacular home. We started off discussing the fact that the room is on the front corner of the home and he had to make decisions regarding the windows on the theater room. Because they are on the front of the home I knew that removing them would not be possible. They were to be 4' wide and 9' tall to match the other 14 windows on the front of the home. These were to be Hurricane windows with motorized blackout shades built in at a cost of $16K each. In our discussion I described several options. I expressed that if the windows were not there that we would not have to design around them and would therefore have more options to the final design. If the windows had to stay, we could work them into the design but a perfect theater has no windows. The last option was to keep the windows visible from the outside but covered inside which offers the look the home needed but the flexibility the theater interior needed. He liked the idea of covering them up and I let him know that we have done this procedure many times with excellent results. He will purchase the windows without the blackout shades built in which will save him about $3600 each.
We walked over to the house to look at the room which was just a concrete shell. The floor and ceiling were poured concrete and 2 of the walls were exterior walls of concrete block. Metal support columns showed the boundary for the interior walls. A farther discussion ensued regarding levels of sound proofing. I advised that there are many levels of sound abatement and asked what he wanted to achieve. The client said he had a bedroom above the theater and aside from the 2 exterior walls, the others butted up to an electrical room which is where the AV gear would go and a hall way. He said he wanted as much control as he could get. I told him that the highest level would require building a room within the room but that is seldom done aside from recording studios. When I asked about the bank of air conditioners located right outside one of the walls I was told that they were the AC units for the entire home. I then advised that they be mounted to isolation pads of neoprene to make sure that the vibration would not transfer through the concrete pad. The builder and client liked the idea very much.
The end result is that I will send the builder plans to create stager stud walls with a combination of sub straights including 1 lb barrier material which is an EVA form of vinyl and resilient channel for the walls and for the ceiling isolation hangers to suspend the drywall by way of springs. I will put together drawings to guide the builder through the sound abatement as well as where to obtain the materials that he is not familiar with. We will build the ceiling down about a foot to allow space for the AC ducts and any other items needed. I will run a set of room mode analysis to make sure that we have the best final dimensions that we can have while still providing enough room to get everything the clients want in the room like seating for 12.
We will start the design but I know it will morph a bit over the next year with regards to electronics and perhaps the finish materials but the design is a lock as the client and his wife found the design they want in my catalogue of images. It is critical to get involved as a theater designer before the walls and ceiling go up if we are going to provide the best finished shell to work from. This room will have a very high level of control with all of the electrical components wired properly regardless of equipment model changes a year from now.
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