The Modernist Ranch
The fact that the homeowner of what’s affectionately called Lucky Dog Ranch spent nearly two decades thinking about the layout and look of the house made custom installer Patrick Martinez’s job much easier in a variety of ways.

“He had plenty of time to think about things—not necessarily in terms of technology, but in terms of how he was going to use the house,” says Martinez, a systems designer with DSI Entertainment Systems in Van Nuys, Calif. “A lot of times we’ll go into a house and the client has no idea how they’re going to use certain spaces. But he knew exactly what the flow of the house was going to be.”

As a result, a lot of the redundancy that’s built into most home automation systems simply wasn’t necessary here. Every Crestron touchscreen didn’t have to manage everything in the house.

“It allowed us to tailor the programming of the Crestron control system more to the space and keep it streamlined,” Martinez says, “which worked out well because the homeowner didn’t want a complicated control system.

He didn’t want to fuss with overly technical controls. It would have been tough for us to create a system as straightforward as he wanted in a house like this if he hadn’t\ already put a lot of thought into how he was going to live in it.”

The house did present its own unique challenges, though—especially when it came time to wire the system.

“The problem was that there simply weren’t a lot of places we could run wiring,” Martinez continues. “There are a few soffits here and there, but the ceilings are very high, which made our wiring runs—from room to room—a lot longer. And on top of that the house is very long. As a result, we probably used 40 percent more wiring than we normally would in a house with the same square footage.”

In addition, the countless hard surfaces used throughout the residence, and the capacious windows, presented significant acoustical challenges.

“In the parlor, [which has] our main surround-sound system, it was tough because the entire left side of the room is glass,” Martinez says. “We did equalize the room with the tools built into the Parasound [Halo C 2 A/V controller], but ultimately, component selection is the most important thing. We chose the Parasound because it tends to have a smoother sound than other gear in the same class. It’s not as bright.”

As for why Martinez and his team did not install a full-blown, dedicated home theater: “I think the owner kind of wishes we had done a dedicated theater, and I’ve told him we can still do it anytime he wants. We have the perfect room downstairs already prewired, so maybe we will soon. He has a great backbone of automation, and he has got a really fantastic whole-house audio/video system. I think the next round of upgrades will focus on the toys, and maybe a Kaleidescape.” —DennisBurger

RESOURCES

Architect: Studio Pali Fekete (SPF:a) of Culver City, Calif. (310.558.0902, spfa.com)
Custom installer: DSI Entertainment Systems of Van Nuys and Montecito, Calif. (818. 906.9940, dsientertainment.com)

Photography by Glenn Campbell

“What makes this place special is the integration. Everything pretty much disappears. Not a lot of stuff on walls. The architecture lent itself to a centralized control, so we don’t have a touch panel in every room.” —Patrick Martinez, custom installer

“This is a story about how a young man with a certain vision of architecture and his young architect both grew and evolved.”—Zoltan E. Pali, architect