El Maro: A Smart Home with No Secondary Rooms

Home of the Year Project Profile

• Name & Location: El Maro, Scottsdale, Arizona
• Integrator: USA Integration, Scottsdale, Arizona
• Award: 2026 Home of the Year, Best Whole-House/Smart Home Over $1 Million, Gold

El Maro is a 20,000 sq ft new construction estate in Paradise Valley, Arizona, built and designed by American First Builders on a commanding site overlooking Camelback Mountain. Scottsdale, Arizona-based USA Integration was engaged during pre-construction, before architectural drawings were finalized, to engineer a complete smart home ecosystem as fundamental to the estate as its structure.

That early start made all the difference. Before framing began, USA Integration delivered a complete photometric lighting plan and panel schedule to the electrician, mapped every alarm zone, specified every shade pocket dimension, and coordinated equipment room locations with American First Builders. The result is technology designed into the architecture rather than retrofitted into it.

El Maro: One platform across five structures

A Crestron Home OS platform integrates 15 subsystems across five structures, including more than 48 audio zones, 12 video distribution zones, 224 lighting dimmer channels controlling over 400 architectural fixtures, more than 120 motorized shades and drapery tracks, over 100 alarm zones, and 27 security cameras. Enterprise networking, Josh.ai voice control, pool, irrigation, and gate entry complete the picture. The installation represents roughly 12% of the estate’s $12–14M build cost, reflecting a client and builder who treated technology as an equal partner to architecture from day one.

The estate’s intelligence shines in its security logic. Custom IF/THEN Crestron programming pushes live camera feeds to the nearest TV the moment an alarm trips, because a phone notification wasn’t fast enough. Leak detection sends zone-specific text alerts, and Vacation Mode randomizes lighting and shade schedules to simulate occupancy. Every subsystem works together in a unified behavioral architecture.

A theater designed around the view

The home theater runs a 20,000-lumen Digital Projection RGB laser projector because the client refused to close the doors and give up the view of Camelback Mountain. The backyard features 17 Ambisonic LSR60 planar ribbon loudspeakers because standard landscape speakers weren’t good enough. Even the Harley garage has an in-ceiling subwoofer and full DM-NVX video distribution, because it’s part of the estate, and the estate has a standard.

Air quality integrated into the control system

Wellness received the same attention. When the client’s vision outgrew an off-the-shelf solution, USA Integration replaced the originally planned Delos platform with a custom air quality system using Intellipure purifiers and Kaiterra sensors, tied into Crestron through a custom BACnet integration. That change was one of three major mid-project expansions, along with the backyard audio upgrade and an 85″ Samsung Terrace on a Future Automation motorized drop mount in the wash bay. All three were absorbed without disrupting the timeline.

This project is part of our coverage for the 2026 CE Pro Home of the Year Awards. Presented annually at CEDIA Expo alongside the BEST Product Awards, the Home of the Year Awards represent the best of the best smart home innovations within the CEDIA channel. Check to see when the next submission window is open in case you have a project you would like to submit and don’t want to miss your opportunity.