The Lodge at Tottenham Hotspur

About The Lodge

When Tottenham Hotspur set out to build The Lodge, the brief was unambiguous: create a residence that would give first-team players every environmental advantage in their preparation and recovery. No distractions, no compromises - just a space that adapts to each athlete's needs while remaining simple enough that technology never intrudes on focus.

The result is a building that remembers how you like your lighting, adjusts its environment to your circadian rhythm, and configures itself to your preferences the moment you walk in - whether you're a player returning from international duty or a corporate guest arriving for an event.

Behind this seamless experience sits Smart Core, the open software platform that won Vanti and AVN Solutions the inaugural Smart Systems Award at the 2020 inAVation Awards in Amsterdam.

The Challenge: Integration without limitation

Elite performance demands specialist solutions: the best AV systems, lighting designed around sleep science, environmental controls that respond to training schedules, access systems that balance security with convenience. The traditional answer would be choosing a single manufacturer's ecosystem and accepting its constraints, or building brittle custom integrations that break with every upgrade.

Tottenham needed a different approach: the freedom to select best-of-breed technology from any vendor, unified behind software sophisticated enough to deliver genuine intelligence, not just remote control.

Why Smart Core won

Smart Core is vendor-agnostic by design. It doesn't sell hardware or compete with manufacturers - it exists purely to integrate their products behind a unified software layer. This philosophical commitment to openness meant the project team could choose optimal technology for every discipline without worrying whether it would connect to everything else.

But openness alone doesn't win awards. What set The Lodge apart was how Smart Core transformed integration from a technical exercise into a performance tool.

Intelligence that serves people

Walk into your room at The Lodge as a player, and the building already knows you. Your lighting preferences load automatically, shading adjusts to how you like to wake up, temperature settles to your ideal. These aren't just saved presets - Smart Core maintains profiles that travel with you, so whichever room you occupy configures itself to feel familiar. During intense preparation periods, this continuity eliminates one more source of cognitive load.

Behind the scenes, the platform orchestrates circadian lighting that shifts colour temperature throughout the day, promoting natural alertness and supporting melatonin production at night. Low-level motion lighting guides safe navigation without disrupting sleep. Automated shading balances natural light with privacy. All of it runs invisibly unless you want to override it.

Coaches can embed performance protocols directly into the environment. Training schedules trigger environmental adjustments in preparation areas, rest periods automatically limit bedroom screen time, and meeting rooms pre-configure for video analysis or tactical sessions. Best practice becomes embedded in the building itself, enforced consistently without manual intervention.

For operations teams, Smart Core replaces fragmented systems with a single interface. Room assignment syncs with player profiles so spaces are ready on arrival, housekeeping coordinates in real–time, maintenance issues route automatically to the right teams, and occupancy sensors and environmental data show how spaces are actually used, replacing guesswork with evidence.

A building that evolves

The Lodge functions as residence, training facility, and premium venue simultaneously - hosting first-team players one week, visiting squads the next, corporate events the week after. Smart Core makes this flexibility possible because it's software-defined. User interfaces, automation routines, and operational controls can all be reconfigured without touching physical infrastructure.

This architecture protects Tottenham's investment. When better AV equipment emerges, it integrates seamlessly. When requirements change, software adapts. The building won't become obsolete as technology advances – it’ll simply learn new capabilities.

The platform advantage

What Vanti and AVN Solutions recognised - and what the InAVation judges validated - is that Smart Core represents a fundamentally different category of building platform. It's not control hardware with software features; it's a software platform that happens to control physical systems. That distinction enables automation sophistication, personalisation depth, and operational intelligence that traditional approaches can't match.

At The Lodge, technology doesn't announce itself. Players don't think about integration or protocols or system status. They experience an environment that anticipates their needs, remembers their preferences, and consistently supports their performance. That's the true measure of intelligent building design: technology so well orchestrated that it becomes invisible.

The inaugural Smart Systems Award recognised exactly this achievement - a project where integration transcended technical exercise to become a genuine performance tool. Smart Core provided the backbone, Vanti and AVN Solutions delivered the vision, and Tottenham Hotspur now operates a residence that adapts as quickly as the game itself demands.