A Miami businessman wants it all — minus the ostentation.

When the owner of a waterfront estate in Miami embarked on a three-year-plus building project that grew into a 12,000-square foot dream house, it was not with any desire to show off.

And though he wanted to furnish his new home with fine antiques, he didn’t want to live in a museum—or, for that matter, in an environment that made guests feel they had to pad around carefully in their socks.

“I love what I have, but I’m not defined by what I have,” says the businessman, who grew up in a prominent family that he describes as a South Florida fixture for 60 years. “Everything that I have is for pure enjoyment by my friends, my family and myself.”

He also wanted a fully automated, technologically advanced house—but all the workings had to be hidden. “See nothing,” says his audiovisual consultant and good friend Robin Bogle, a co-owner of Advanced Home Theater in Miami, Fla. “Speakers are in the ceilings. Subwoofers are in the walls. You walk into a room and don’t see a thing.”

There was something else: The divorced father of two boys, ages 5 and 11, advised interior designer Charlotte Dunagan of Atmosphere Creations Design Group in Miami, Fla., that the residence had to be family-friendly—a place where the kids could enjoy every room:

“We have to be prepared for grape juice spilling anywhere,” the homeowner told his interior designer. The resulting interiors of the two-story house, sprawled artfully around a palm-surrounded, T-shaped pool, are a happy marriage of warm woods, cozy fabrics and cleverly disguised audiovisual components.

Technology disappears behind mirrors or motorized cabinets that spring to life by touching a button on the ubiquitous Crestron touch screen. Colors ranging from rusts to greens add to the down-to-earth kid-compatible atmosphere, as do luxurious but informal-looking floors of distressed German hardwood in the master bedroom and creamy limestone outdoor pavers in the great room. All of this is much to the satisfaction of the owner.

“I hated the process of going through a few different contractors and the difficulties dealing with zoning and the city,” the homeowner says. “But I absolutely love my house.” He loves it so much, in fact, that he moved his office there: “Kids run in and out,” he says of his work space, equipped with a billiards table and dueling television-computer screens positioned above the antique oak table that serves as his desk.