Some projects come together so nicely, it’s almost hard to believe it’s true. That’s what happened for Chad Bessette of ASL Home Entertainment Group. When he came on board to design a home theater for a wealthy resident of Tuscon, Arizona, he found that the architect (Rob Robinette), the builder (Willmeng Homes), and the interior designer (Lori Carroll & 
Associates) had planned ahead for the work that he needed to do.

“One of the largest challenges that occurs in a project like this is finding a way to allow the equipment to do its job effectively, while not affecting the overall design of the room,” Bessette writes. “Thankfully Ron’s foresight had led him to give us a special room for our equipment that was isolated, but nearby, and offered all the things we needed—separate power, space for all of our connections and even adequate ventilation and active cooling. With that out of the way, Lori’s [the interior designer] ideas really started to get the creativity going.”

The design of the space is impressive. Combining the owner’s passion for collecting automobiles with a passion for cinema, an ornate lobby/billiard room leads to the home theater, while automatic drapes reveal a museum-like garage that houses classic sports cars. The theater (known as Pima Canyon), built using computer-aided acoustic modeling, employs a 7.2 configuration of Tannoy IDP speakers and subwoofers, Krell electronics, Kaleidescape A/V, servers and 4:3 to 2.35: 1 cinema with Digital Projection’s Mercury HD 3 Chip projector. This meticulously designed space also won the American Society of Interior Designers' (ASID) 2008 Design Excellence Award for Best of Show and First Place.