The newest Crestron experience center is on the third floor of the New York Design Center, and it is just one of the many companies in the building that collectively offer everything interior designers need to create luxury homes for their clients. After a day of looking at rugs and countertops and cabinets and furniture, clients must appreciate the chance to visit a space that takes care of them and shows how convenient a home can be.
“When you come in, it’s a welcoming space — you’re not coming into a black box. You’re coming into what you would love for your home to be able to be,” says JoAnn Arcenal, director of customer experience centers, Crestron. “It’s teeming with technology. We have our lighting control, shades, and distributed audio/video. But it’s a beautiful space that has all the technology integrated here discreetly, and it’s not overwhelming.”
Tour Guide
To create the full experience, the tour starts with a re-created NYC brownstone-style door with a third-party smart lock that opens quickly with the touch of the Crestron Home app.
From there, homeowners, architects, and interior designers walk into a realistically sized NYC apartment, one that again uses Crestron Home to create a welcome scene that silently raises the blinds, starts the music, and sets the lights. Of course, some clients may not notice that right away as immediately to the left is a living room with a large-screen TV playing football games to highlight the company’s association with the New York Giants.
“We recently hosted an NFL Draft party here and, at the touch of a button, we had the NFL Network come on and had the tunable LEDs highlight Giants Blue,” says Arcenal. “For those who had never experienced automation like this before, it is the first ‘Aha’ moment they experience.”
But certainly not the last, as to the left of the television is a turntable station that uses Crestron DM NAX Audio Edge devices to bring its music to the audio distribution system throughout the apartment.
“Some of our clients have amassed these massive collections of vinyl, and, prior to this experience, they were stuck in one room where they could enjoy it,” says Arcenal. “This can be great, but now they can also enjoy it throughout their home. For the demo, we automate the lights to turn a warm orange as the music fills the space.”
Getting a first taste of automation and distributed audio and video can give clients ideas, and even inspire them to challenge the integrators.
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“We had one gentleman come through who had never experienced integrated technologies before, and his dream was to have a home as smart as Jarvis in the Iron Man films,” Arcenal explains. “He said, ‘I want to have my audio, but I don’t want it blasting throughout the space — I want it to follow me throughout my home.’ He thought he had us in a ‘gotcha’ moment, thinking we’d never be able to do that. But with our conditional logic and our occupancy sensors, we can tell it that, if someone is in the room, then resume playing. It isn’t even difficult because conditional logic is native to Crestron Home.
“That was his pie-in-the-sky wish that he thought couldn’t happen. So, we told him, ‘Yes, of course we can do that.’”
In addition to convenience, the distributed audio system also offers NYC apartment dwellers a more practical benefit: space. “The average cost per square foot in Manhattan is around $2200,” says Arcenal. “I asked one customer about their last place without distributed AV and how big the credenza was to hide all the gear. They described a piece that was about 3 feet by 12 feet. Now multiply that by $2200 and that’s a lot of space that’s not paying rent to you! Now they are taking back that living space.”
From there, it is a short walk to the kitchen, which also features a small dining area. The entire section is covered by elegant lighting fixtures and linear lighting around the countertops.
“This section highlights the transformational power of light,” explains Arcenal. “When we are cooking, we are in task mode with task lighting —everything is on at 100%. At the end of that, the kitchen becomes the heart of the home and with the touch of a button, the artificial lights come down, the shades rise to allow more natural light to come in through, and the music plays softly in the background. All that with one touch of a button at the end of that two hours of prep time, leading to another ‘Aha’ moment.”
The other outstanding feature in the kitchen for always active Gothamites is the smart Bosch coffee machine that is integrated into the Crestron Home system, which means that when you wake up in the morning, a button press on the bedroom touch screen is all it takes to get the coffee brewing in the kitchen. No more waiting for the machine to heat up so you can get out the door — grab and go!
Speaking of the bedroom, that is the next stop on the tour. There, the first thing that leaps out is the window coverings, both horizontal shear shades and the drapes. “Many people don’t even realize that we have horizontal shears, so they like to see that,” says Arcenal. “And with the drapery covering the NYC views, the natural action here is to yank them open. When they tug on the curtains here, they automatically continue opening on their own. They close the same way — a quick yank, and they automatically go the rest of the way.”
The bedroom also features the DM-NAX-BTIO-1G wall plate with Bluetooth connectivity and unbalanced analog audio input and output, which allows any wired or wireless audio source to bridge to a DM-NAX network. The BTIO is great for guest rooms or hospitality because guests can connect with Bluetooth and the system will forget them when they go out of range — no need to log out of their accounts.
Across from the bedroom is the home office, which does double-duty as Arcenal’s office and showcases circadian lighting and the Mercury mini-tabletop conferencing systems. “I can control the entire space from here,” she says, “but I can also use this as my speakerphone. It has omnidirectional mics on all four corners and a speaker on the back so I can move about the room if needed. I can also mute the mics and the unit glows red, letting me know I don’t have to worry about any hot mic issues.”
The final stop is the design studio, where interior designers and homeowners can get in the weeds about styles of hembars, shades, touch screens, and more. “Before becoming director of customer experience centers, I was director of residential business development, and I was working with all the specifiers,” explains Arcenal. “We love talking about finishes and how this can go with that and all the different ways that we can address the aesthetics. It makes such a difference to be able to just continue the conversation here and do it all in one shot.”
Let’s Meet
That covers the residential area, but there is another section of the experience center that those doing conference rooms should definitely investigate. The commercial side offers examples of huddle rooms, small conference rooms, and large meeting areas that use Crestron tech along with microphones from companies such as Shure and Sennheiser.
This area was where I had my own “Aha” moment, as I’ve worked in Manhattan offices for decades and have never enjoyed such an intuitive conference system, which focuses on the speaker no matter where he or she is and allows people to easily connect with the room.
So, not only does the Crestron NYC Experience Center provide a great example of smart luxury apartment living, but it’s also a great place to take a meeting (just let Arcenal know you’re coming).
