$250 Million Mega-Mansion Incorporates Spectacular Display Technologies in Creating the Ultimate Luxury Home
In the exclusive Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, the luxury home market reached new heights with the listing of a newly-built $250 million residential home—by far the most expensive to ever hit the U.S. real estate market. Each aspect and detail of the four-story, 38,000-square-foot mansion was carefully chosen with the idea to make jaws drop with every turn of the head by offering the most opulent amenities that can possibly be imagined in a home today.Developer Bruce Makowsky, founder of BAM Luxury Development, built the mansion on spec, targeting the elite, ultra-high-end market where only the world's billionaires represent potential buyers.
Makowsky is familiar with this market, having previously sold a Beverly Hills mansion in 2016 to Swedish video game billionaire Markus Persson for $70 million, the highest price ever paid for a Beverly Hills home. Makowsky justifies the extraordinary $250 million asking price for his Bel Air mansion by pointing to the luxury superyacht market, where the mega rich will drop upwards of $500 million for a boat. So why not spend that much for a home?
Mind-Blowing Amenities
The sprawling, 12-bedroom, 21-bath Bel Air mansion includes three gourmet kitchens, five bars, seven full-time staffers, two commercial elevators (one lined with alligator skin), a wellness spa and a fitness center. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.
"I went around the world to source the materials for this home, whether it be the finest stones found anywhere or the most luxurious furniture," Makowsky said. "Every single inch of the house—inside and out—was meticulously curated. Everything had to be the very best."
More of the incredible amenities of the home include a four-lane bowling alley, a James Bond-themed movie theatre, two cellars stocked with a multi-million-dollar wine collection, a handcrafted $2-million-dollar steel staircase and an extensive art collection of over 100 carefully selected pieces including an oversized Leica camera sculpture created by Chinese artist Liao Yibai, with an estimated value of $1 million.
On the home's lower level is an extensive entertainment space and an auto gallery featuring 12 rare cars. The auto collection (which comes with the home) is valued at over $30 million and features a Bugatti Veyron, a Ferrari 488, a Rolls-Royce Dawn, a Pagani Huayra and a 1936 Mercedes-Benz 540K.
The exterior features 17,000 square-feet of entertainment decks and an 85-foot Italian glass infinity pool with a swim-up bar. The decks offer 270-degree views of L.A. and perched on a rooftop helipad is a deactivated helicopter from the 1980's television series Airwolf, renovated into an art piece.
Igniting the Senses with Stunning Video Display Technologies
In designing his mansion, Makowsky placed special emphasis on home entertainment. Much in the same style as the home's other impressive features, his intent was to incorporate the most cutting-edge and stunning audio and video technology to "absolutely blow people away," he said. This led to a collaboration with Planar. "We worked with Planar to create some of the most incredible installations that could be conceived in a residential home," Makowsky said.
The most dramatic of these installations is a 4x4 Clarity® Matrix® High Bright LCD Video Wall that is configured to a $2-million hydraulic lift, which, at the press of a button, rises into view from behind the 85-foot infinity pool. "We dug down 25-feet into the ground to engineer the spiral lift system," Makowsky said. "The resolution of the screen is perfect during the day, and at night it transforms the deck environment into an amazing outdoor theater."
Designed for challenging, bright ambient light conditions, the Clarity Matrix High Bright video wall delivers outstanding brightness performance—representing an optimized solution for the sunny, Southern California outdoor environment of the Bel Air mansion.
In the mansion's interior, installed above a 22-seat bar on the lower entertainment floor is a 28-feet-long, 7-feet-high Planar® DirectLight® LED Video Wall System, which Makowsky believes is the largest video wall display to ever be installed inside a U.S. home. Featuring a fine pitch of 2.5mm, the black resin LEDs of Planar DirectLight deliver a crisp, high-contrast image and the Planar@ MicroGrid Shader™ enables the deepest levels of black. Combined, these features produce stunning, crystal clear images. Additionally, the revolutionary Planar® EasyAlign™ Mounting System enables less than a 4-inch depth when mounted, providing a truly seamless and thin profile display solution.
Makowsky also selected Planar® UltraRes™ Series 98-inch 4K LCD displays for inclusion in the mansion's interior, installing a total of 56 Planar UltraRes Series displays throughout various rooms and locations. Offering Ultra HD resolution (3840 x 2160), exceptional 4K clarity and a sleek and elegant ultra-slim profile, Planar UltraRes Series is an ideal choice for the home's luxury interior style.
"There's a lot of important parts to this house but home technology is clearly one of the most important," Makowsky said. "We choose Planar because the color, quality and reliability are unparalleled. It was vital to have the best of everything in this home and with Planar displays, the clarity is just perfection. Planar have been an incredible partner and we will use them with all our houses moving forward."
