High Tech Home

Vince Murphy is an architect first and foremost, but he has developed a passion for the cutting edge technology that is fast becoming de rigueur for the house market at the luxury end.

‘We continually research the very latest systems that will do the job best,’ he told me as we enjoyed a breakfast of croissants and coffee in the café opposite his elegant office in Wimbledon Village. ‘There are always new and improved systems that come on to the market with an ever-increasing speed and we are keen to keep up to date.’ If the device is too noticeable or too ugly he redesigns it so that it will fit into a space and become a discreet and complementary element of the interior décor.

‘How do you manage to fit the house up with all the necessary cabling?’ I asked, remembering a time when I had an electrician to visit who left a terrible mess and the house needed redecorating the week after. ‘Every bit of cabling is stripped out when the house is empty – it can take a week or two but it is essential to make a clean start so that there are no hiccups later on.’ Vince is keen to explain that while entertainment systems are usually included within a typical brief, his firm’s expertise goes further than that. ‘We are specialists in whole-home automation systems - systems that make a family house run on wheels. The effective design of a building’s lighting, heating, communications and security is every bit as important as the fun stuff.’ He told me how with the right use of new technology the house can save energy and reduce carbon emissions to an all-time low.

‘We can extract and process heat from below the ground for a fraction of the emissions and running costs of conventional boiler technology, and the temperature in every room is continually monitored and adjusted to prevent wasted energy. The house lighting can be designed precisely to the right strength in the right place at the right time to fulfil the exact needs of the householder without wastage.’ He gave an example of what he called ‘a light scene’. ‘If you wake up at night and want a glass of milk from the fridge you can touch a button labelled ‘munchies’ and lights will automatically activate – on just the right path – to light your way to the fridge and back.’ Lighting can be changed effortlessly to suit the mood. In consultation with the client his team will design a bespoke range of variations ranging from romantic mood lighting to exciting party illumination.

‘There are some people,’ I suggested, ‘who do not like computers or complicated technology.’ I wondered how Vince could help these technophobes. He told me: ‘Our role is to make technology discreet, intuitive, and to reduce hassle. People don’t like technology when it doesn’t work’, and explained how his IT crew installs whole-home WiFi so that computers can be accessed seamlessly throughout the house. ‘If there’s a problem there’s always a hardwired backup close to hand.’

I suggested that we should go along and see this cutting-edge technology at work, so we visited his client Cecilia who, with her husband Iain and their two children, have just had a house built in the heart of Wimbledon Village. ‘We returned from Dubai and set our heart on a property just down the road which didn’t work out so we decided to build from scratch,’ explained Cecilia in her rich Irish accent. ‘We never set out to do a new-build - it’s just how it worked out.’ ‘What are the advantages?’ I asked. ‘You can have what you want where you want,’ she explained. ‘We decided at a very early stage that if we were building for new we should have the best technology available to make the house a state-of-the-art project so that if we ever decided to sell we would protect our investment.’ ‘What are the favourite aspects of your high-tech home?’ I enquired. ‘I love the fact that I can use my laptop in any room – last Christmas I spoilt myself and watched a film in bed on my laptop. One of the other great advantages is that the children can watch their favourite TV programmes and I can see mine without any clashes and of course the security is wonderful - we can monitor the front entrance from any part of the house.’

We sat and chatted over a cup of coffee in her beautiful kitchen/family room looking over the garden. ‘It’s worrying really,’ she said, ‘but one gets so used to the technology virtually running the house: the TV, the music, the radio, the lighting, the heating - the way it integrates into our life, that we forget about it and just take it for granted: it makes life so easy when everything runs so smoothly and if anything does go wrong, Vince and his team are on hand to fix it.’

Useful Contacts

Featured:  Vince Murphy of TechniQuest  020 8944 9040 www.techniquest.co.uk
Other useful contacts:  www.holdenharper.co.uk www.nocream.co.uk