Special Purpose Rooms

I once had a special purpose room, the last time I had a house. It was a crazy room. I was flush with cash after making a second fortune, and I splurged a large amount on a media room.

Now when I say “media room,” I really mean a special purpose room for, well, enjoying media. In particular movies, music, and computers.

My media room was pretty crazy. I would tell you all about how crazy it was, but it was so unique it would readily identify me to many people. Suffice it to say that I had contracted with several well-known engineering and sound companies for the work, none of which normally take residential projects. (I will reference one very interesting component, which is a motion control system that works with several hundred movies. Check out D-Box.)

Suffice it to say that this totally insane expenditure got out of hand because it was less about sound or video, and more about an intellectual design challenge with cost constraint as a low priority. I have many associates and friends that have one or more special rooms that receive similarly obsessive treatments. I have seen rooms for books, art, wines, cars, computers, fossils, model trains, dolls, and any number of other things. Mine happened to be about audio and video. (Ok, I confess, I had an earlier space with a very cool library and reading room, but I have seen plenty that were more elaborate than my early effort there.)

My next media rooms for our upcoming living spaces will be far more modest. I do not have the time (nor the eyes or ears) to justify a media room that pushes the state of the art. Or more accurately, I want to devote my time, eyes and ears to other pursuits!

Jenny and I have another project: another special purpose room, but not a media room. This one is our pleasure room. We're naming it Xanadu, of course.

We may eventually put one in each home, but for now we are thinking of it in one particular city in a specific room of appropriate size and infrastructure.

The Xanadu idea arose from multiple sources. The couples spa suite at the Landmark Hotel in Hong Kong was one inspiration. An interesting sex room and a few soap club experiences in Japan were others. And our recent amateur dabblings in stripping, bondage, and massage seemed to indicate that ordinary furniture might be insufficient even with MacGuyver levels of ingenuity. Products like sex swings, benches, and swinging benches, and the Liberator point to interesting design directions for custom furniture. Since I have commissioned work in the past from shops with computer-based milling and forming capability, almost anything imaginable is possible to build.

Xanadu is quite a challenge. It has aspects of a media room, a bathroom, a spa, and a bedroom. There is even a kitchen aspect. It has to be flexible and reconfigurable like our moods. Yet we do not want it to be complex nor difficult to clean or maintain.

Yet Xanadu is a great project for us. Although challenging it has aspects that are fun, and many that are detail oriented. It has implementation and incremental progress. It is for Peau and us — plenty of motivating factors.

I will keep you posted. If you have any ideas to share, please do!