OTHER TECH

With the attitude of someone who thinks he's seen it all, I visited the recent CEDIAExpo in Denver expecting to be neither pleasantly surprised nor particularly disappointed. Let's be real: When Blu-ray Disc delivers film-like picture plus audiophile sound, and a well-engineered home theater puts the local multiplex to shame, what else can impress a rabid movie buff like me? I arrived, I looked around (nice . . . okay . . . not too bad . . . cool . . . so what?), and I left. The lack of particular noteworthiness was even more evident in the home theater designs displayed throughout the convention floor - a few decent-looking ones, but most of them left a lot to be desired.

Sometimes, when I look at the forced theatricality of most designs today, I feel guilty by association. I'm painfully reminded of my own slip-ups as a designer over the past 20 years. The trickiest part in theater design is restraint: Sprinkle too many decorative flourishes around and you run the risk of turning the room into a cheesy Las Vegas high-roller suite; but show too much restraint, and the room can end up exuding the personality of a wet noodle. It's all about having a solid understanding of the rules of design for which talent alone is not enough; hard-earned experience through trial and error is just as essential.

As I was going through this month's submissions to select the one that would best illustrate my point about restraint, an alarming thought came to mind: If it's hard for a design professional to exercise control over his craft, how can one expect the poor end-user to pull a rabbit out of a hat without a design background? That's exactly the challenge that our reader below must have faced when she embarked upon designing her own theater. She writes:

I would like to submit our theater room for the "Ask Theo" section of your magazine. My husband and I designed the room, and my husband built it himself. JUTTA TAUBE / via e-mail

What can I tell you, Jutta? You're a brave soul. Most untrained people would think twice before taking the plunge into the uncharted depths of design inspiration, not to mention construction expertise - but not you and your husband! The results are better than what I would have expected, given that this is a DIY effort.

Designing a theater isn't about pretty fabrics, comfy seats, and framed posters to dress up the walls. It's also about room isolation, acoustics, sightlines, lighting, seamless integration of technology, and so on and so on. You have indeed covered some of the basics: The speakers are concealed, there's no distracting A/V gear on proud display, and you've got a second row of seating that appears to be reasonably elevated to provide an unobstructed view of the screen. Not too many homemade home theaters can make such claims. I also like the arches connecting the theater with the bar outside, the attractive cove that surrounds the room and separates the walls from the ceiling, and last but not least, your good sense of contrast in the use of color.

Now for the bad news: What's with those drapes on the left wall? Not only are they irrelevant; they compete for attention with the stage area. A simple, maybe framed, acoustical panel sitting between the columns and the arch above them would be a more honest design gesture. (With the right specifications, it would also be better for the room acoustics). Also, what are those three panels doing on the rear wall? That wall probably does need acoustical treatment, but the way the panels just sit back there, forlorn and completely unrelated to anything else around them, makes them a visual distraction rather than an attraction. You would have been much better off applying large, panelized acoustical treatments there.

Finally, I'm not fond of the two Doric columns on the stage. You had the right instinct: You needed something to frame the screen and focus attention on the image projected there. But these columns are arbitrary and rather silly - just like what you'd expect to see in a suburban wedding-reception hall. Do your theater a favor and tone things down by painting them a shade darker than the square columns in the room.

Don't let me depress you: Even with the misfires, you did a better than some paid professionals do. And you should be proud of your husband; he made both of you look good with his carpentry skills.