Last week I attended CEDIA’s Design and Build conference in Amsterdam. The event was organised to give interior designers an understanding of the very latest developments in smart home design, and to provide a glimpse of where this exciting area is heading in the future. And sometimes it’s just fun to play with gadgets!
We often include elements of Audio / Video design, lighting control, heating control and so on in our projects. At the very least we cable for future developments so that even if a client is not looking to include this technology right now, the infrastructure has been included, and at low cost, to cater for future developments.
To achieve the simplicity for the end user that allows them ‘to just live their lives’ without having the feeling of interacting with technology is difficult, although it’s achievable. This conference showed us just how far it is possible to go, and the levels of control and automation were extraordinary.
With other designers from the British Institute of Interior Design, we also visited ISE 2020. Integrated Systems Europe is the largest exhibition of its kind in the world. A vast display of smart home design products covering audio, video, control and automation.
Many of the products are about concealing things, such as the PMC loudspeaker system here, out of sight behind an acoustically-transparent projector screen.
The residential products aren’t limited to inside the house either. The latest garden audio systems from Sonance are designed to be hidden among the beds and foliage around the garden. Quality doesn’t suffer though, as the small satellite speakers are backed up by a large subwoofer, sunk into the ground.
And as with any show, there are the insane products too, like Samsung’s new 292-inch 8K LCD screen. A seriously large screen, with extraordinary picture quality. Never mind the price tag of over £1m, for most of us we’d need to build a new house just to have room for it!
Next month I’m going to be joining Andrew Davies of Taylist media (Studio magazine, KBBreview) for a panel talk on Smart Home technology. Taking place at KBB2020 at Birmingham’s NEC, it’s going to be interesting to discuss where we are with this technology and how we think we’re going to use it in the future.
