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Audio Video Interiors April

VILLA MONTAGNA

Charity begins at home in this showcase house in California
STORY BY MARILOU VAUGHN
INSTALLATION AND INTERIOR DESIGN BY INNOVATIVE THEATRE + SOUND AND ELSWORTH DESIGN ASSOCIATES

In Westlake Village, one Los Angeles's most northern suburbs, you'll find a 10,000-square-foot Mediterranean house that recently had a face-lift. Its owners, Alisa and Frank Barbarino, turned it over to not one or two interior designers for redecorating, but to dozens of them for a complete makeover. The Villa Montagna became the 1997 Design Showcase house with proceeds going to benefit the Wellness Community-Valley/Ventura.

"The Wellness Community is one of the charities we support," says Frank Barbarino, who owns a commercial printing company. "In the past we've donated printing to them, but this time we wanted to do more. We volunteered our house as the Showcase House and moved out. We were out for six months and it got a little rough. We had to approve everything that was done in the house."

One of the most important changes to the home was the theater, whish features audio/video by Keith Willis of Innovative Theatre + sound in Santa Monica and interior design by Jon E. Heberling of Ellsworth design Associates in Long Beach. For the theater, which was designed from scratch , the two were given a daunting space. "I will never forget the dimensions," says Heberling. "Thirteen and one-half feet by 50 feet. we're talking bowling alley."

Actually, the space had been the mechanical room for an elevator that the Barbarinos had removed. What remained was empty space with white walls and no windows. But Willis and Heberling who have collaborated on projects for 10 years, viewed this as a blank canvas on which to project their own creativity.

Willis, who studied both electronics and fine art in college, spent eight years touring with performers such as Prince, Lee Ritenour and Chick Corea as both an engineer and musician. "Eight years was enough. I got tired of touring," he says. "So I started my own A/V company in 1987."

We share that background in fine arts," Heberling explains. "but i also design and build houses. So I would give a home theater its look and Keith would design the audio/video and pre-wrire the space. We do more than equipment and cabinetry and seating, we come up with a whole concept. We take a room that is nothing and turn it into a theater that is pleasing to the eye and ear but is different and shows the artistic touch of both of us."

In addition to the challenges inherent in this project because of the shape of the room, 'there was an additional hurdle. "we were brought in at the final hour," Willis recalls. "Other designs for the room had been presented to Mr. Barbarino but they were for a media room with components in an armoire. He wanted the big sound and a big picture of a top-quality home theater."

"In terms of the look of the room, we got the basic idea in about 30 minutes," says Heberling. There was the Villa upstairs and downstairs was what we though of as the catacombs- a secret place for a wine cellar and theater. To out credit, we created it in just four weeks."

"At one point I worked for 38 hours straight with out closing my eyes," says Willis, "but we got it done."

The result is a magical place made distinctive by deep cornices and classical columns. "Not only is the room an odd shape," Heberling says, "but it is wrong from an architectural standpoint: You enter the room from the side instead of the center. What we had to do was redirect the eye from looking to the side of the room to looking toward the end where the draper screen is. We did that by building a pony wall from each side. The walls create an archway the leads into the theater from the correct architectural position and they also make a separate area that functions as a lobby. People can sit in the lobby and talk and eat and drink, but the acoustics are such that lobby noise won't interfere with whatever is going on in the theater."

Six floor-to-ceiling columns are functional in addition to adding visual drama to the room. They conceal the speaker system, "and they have an acoustic purpose," Willis explains.

"I wanted a slight fabric drape on either side of the column to soften them visually and that ended helping the acoustics as well," Heberling adds.

There are several other nice bits of trompe l'oeil about this room. It appears to narrow and to slope down as it approaches the screen end. Neither is true. Four oversized canvases, images from old postcards that have been blown up and hand-colored by the designers, act as windows onto a non-existent landscape. and the ceiling is faux finished to resemble a sunset.

But there in nothing faux about the theater experience offered in this room, to as many as 12 people as a time. "We created two systems: one for theater audio and another for audiophile music only," says Willis. "We used Class A pre-amplification and amplification to make the Class A audiophile system Mr. Barbarino wanted: a Cello Palette preamplifier and two Krell MDA-500 mono front-channel amplifiers. There is a voltage switch system that automatically switches from this system to the Chiro C-800 THX/AC-3/Dolby Pro Logic preamplifier for the theater system. And everything works off a Niles 1-touch home automation system."

The video system includes a Vidikron Vision Two video projector, Faroudja LD-100 line-doubler and draper micro-perforated 10-foot film screen. Theater audio includes a Threshold T-400 rear-channel amplifier, Krell KSA-10 center-channel amplifier and DAC I/E digital/analog processor, PS Audio CD drive, two Rane ME-60 and two ME-30 graphic equalizers. Remaining speakers include a B&W FCM-8 THX center channel; two The kind Horn Company front-channel speakers; two B&W SCM-8 THX Rear-channel speakers; and four Velodyne FSR-12 subwoofers, including one in each of the two pony walls. Remaining components are a Sony SLV-1000 S-VHS video cassette recorder, Toshiba DV-3006 DVD player and Pioneer CLD-59 Elite laserdisc player.

Willis, Standing in front of the screen, gestures to the component racks on either side and says, "Up here is it all today's Technology. Out there [he points into the darkened theater] it is old world.

Two creative designers have brought these worlds together, and that takes a special kind of talent.