Savant Bows Virtual, Physical Tours of Las Vegas Area Showcase

Savant’s 15,000-square-foot showcase in Henderson, Nevada, unveiled to the media on a Zoom call Wednesday, was 15 years in the making, said Blair Piersall, vice president-sales, calling the experience “the very edge of what is smart home today.” The goal of the house, dubbed Vegas Modern 001, was to define what’s on trend in smart home technology today “and where we feel it’s going in the next five years."

Savant is sharing the space with local custom home builder Blue Heron, to be used as a “smart living showcase.” It’s a biophilic design, an architectural approach that aims to connect occupants to the natural environment through the use of direct nature, indirect nature, and space and place conditions.

The home recently sold for $25 million, the largest residential purchase in Nevada history, said Aaron Gutin, specification development director, but Blue Heron and Savant will be able to use the house as a showcase for designers and installers for the next three years. The technology “star” is the USAI Lighting system, using Savant controls, that synchronizes lighting color and temperature to match natural light from the sun throughout the day.

Hiding the electronics -- placing speakers in troughs in ceilings and walls, and 14-inch subwoofers inside a bar, for example -- was as important to the project as showing off Savant’s technological prowess, said Gutin. The goal was for people touring the space to leave saying, “I don’t think I’ve seen anything,” despite walking past more than 23 keypads and touch screens, he said.

Savant invested $1 million in the house, including outdoor living spaces. On how the company will determine whether the investment pays off, Gutin said sales will be one marker. “We’ll know sales that have been inspired by this space,” he said, “but you don’t do something like this solely for profit.” The showcase is a way for the company to educate the design community and their clients about the possibilities of smart home technology and a way to “show off our wares.” Savant’s integrator partner for the project, Las Vegas-based Eagle Sentry, has closed several projects based on walkthroughs: “It’s already paying off in lots of ways, Gutin said.

Piersall said the home, with views of the Las Vegas Strip, builds off the experience Savant had creating a showroom in a loft in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. That project was a retrofit; Vegas Modern was built from the ground up. Showcasing smart home technology in a real-world setting is often the deal-clincher for a Savant project. “Once we get somebody into the space -- virtually or in person -- they usually buy something,” Piersall said. The homes introduce clients to technology they didn’t know was available, he said. Tours tend to result in bigger projects.

All the control and amplification, networking, lighting and energy management equipment fits into three racks behind the kitchen pantry, said Gutin. “If this were any other solution, you would need a massive space to fit six, seven, eight racks of equipment,” he said, crediting Savant’s IP-based audio and video distribution that requires less space than other upscale smart home systems. Everything in the home that’s providing critical services is hard-wired to a “really robust" Netgear networking system, he said.

Energy efficiency is a priority for Savant in the solar-powered house, which uses Racepoint microgrid monitoring technology that gives homeowners insights into energy use, said Gutin. “It affords the end user an opportunity to make more sustainable decisions about how they use energy in their home,” he said. They can see that the pool pump is using 20% of monthly consumption and then alter the schedule to “shave off some dollars” or schedule lighting and shading at different times of day to minimize the amount of heat coming in via sunlight, he said.

The home has 15 4K video sources distributed to 17 rooms, a 43-zone audio system powered by 19,000 watts of amplification, architectural speakers and digital music from popular streaming services.