A high-end installation in a famous English cemetery could make an interesting sequel to Weekend at Bernie’s. After all, Bernie may be dead, but he’s still the life of the party.

Highgate Cemetery is one of the most famous cemeteries in the world.

It is listed by the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England, the UK Government’s statutory adviser on historic environment, as a site of outstanding historical and architectural interest.

The cemetery opened in 1839 and more than 850 notable people are buried there. Among them are six Lord Mayors of London and the father of communism, Karl Marx.

Now, a modern two-storey house sits at the back of the lot.

“It was our client’s dream to create a house that reflected his character and challenged conventional ways of thinking,” says Robin Courtenay, director of London-based custom installer SMC.

The Cemetery House, as it has been dubbed, was named best integrated home over £250,000 ($A515,000) in this year’s CEDIA UK awards.

“Our client has lived on the site for a number of years and his great-great-grandfather is buried only a short distant from the house.

“His vision was to build the most amazing modern structure, echoing the industrial nature of the building that stood there before, on one of the most remarkable sites in London. This ultra-modern building is surrounded by 19th century graves only a few yards away.”

Robin says the client has a long-standing deep passion for music and has always bought the very best systems he could afford.

“He wanted to install the finest-sounding systems in a very acoustically challenging space coupled with a fully integrated home, driven from touch screen control.

“He had owned seven homes before this one and had always wanted to play his music as loud as possible but was concerned about disturbing his neighbours. The unusual location of this house allows him to play whatever he likes as loud as he dares.”

The overarching difficulty with this project was the construction of the building itself.

“A key element of the design is extensive use of internal bare-faced concrete and glass walls, providing minimal cable runs. The locations of all screens, speakers and associated sockets had to be chosen and finalised before the concrete wall and floors were cast.

“This required absolute certainty of our design much earlier in the construction, as there was no flexibility to change equipment locations or run fresh wires once the wall and floors were cast.”

The construction threw up more difficulties in the bedrooms where there was a special requirement that the TV screens were to be hidden when not in use. The extensive use of glass walls also meant there were very few places to house a screen that would produce an optimal viewing angle.

“The problem was overcome by manufacturing a pivoting section of a partition wall that could conceal the screen when it was not in use then be moved out to the correct viewing position when it was.

“The highly reflective hard internal surfaces also provided an acoustically challenging space. Reflections and reverberations were minimised by reducing parallel surfaces and the clever use of internal glass partitions to create acoustic baffles.”

Robin says a primary concern was to protect such a beautiful home in a remote and potentially vulnerable location. As a result, a Grade 3 intruder alarm system was installed with full perimeter CCTV surveillance.

Housed in the basement is a 7.1 surround sound cinema system using Meridian DSP7000 front and rear speakers with Meridian DSP420 sides.

Meridian’s Digital Faroudja 1080p projector is housed in a drop-down mechanism on the ceiling. Elsewhere in the property, Kef in-ceiling speakers complete the multi-room audio system.

Lighting plays a big part in the overall design. Natural and artificial light is controlled via a Berker EIB system, which connects electrical devices via a control wire, interfacing with Crestron touch screens.

“Unusually, the kitchen is located on the top floor. And at a touch of a button the glass roof slides away to create a huge open room overhanging the cemetery with extensive views across the city of London.”

Robin says the client now has a unique house in a remarkable setting.

“He loves the fact that the house feels minimalist in nature but is packed with the latest electronics systems and probably the finest music systems in the world.”