Grand Designs

The new Grand Designs was such a disappointment tonight. £££££££ but no taste or environmental protection. I hate these silly people who ruin habitats and don't care about the local area. Sod off you lot. Rich idiots are unfashionable.

When this show first started, we quickly compiled a "drinking game" checklist: 1) Will blow the budget. 2) Won't finish within timeline. 3) Want to be in by Christmas. 4) Underfloor heating. 5) Woman gets pregnant before the build is done.

A few years on now, and underfloor heating is so commonplace, they don't really show it anymore, and there are very few pregnancies now, but items 1, 2 and 3 are still tested and true.

Without a doubt, Grand Designs (including AU and NZ) is one of our top shows to enjoy as a family.

Another homebuilding series focusing strictly on the objects of design and nothing about the people who invest and labor on it? These home projects are carefully curated process tracks, spanning years. They're about real people and most with limited funds. Without their dramatic stakes revealed in each episode, you have but a nice glossy Architectural Record on TV. I couldn't watch it. Space without people interacting with it is meaningless to a lot of us!

And here they're not all brutalist modern/ Scandinavian plank designs-- although my personal taste runs to that look-- where walls and furniture provide their own function yet can be a tabula rasa for bespoke decoration, if any! No, many of the episodes I've seen reveal some way-out structures that would show up in National Geographic - don't want to give anything away here-- but it doesn't get much more diverse. These process shows are a real eyeful, with a perfect balance of visioned people, old and new tech, and the built environment.

If Kevin and crew shows up for a USA tour and are looking for a good editor-- sign me up! I live for this stuff. That's how I feel about this distinctive series.

Thanks to Netflix for the four seasons I've binged thus far-- I realize this series goes back 20 years.

What's about all those people thinking they could be project coordinators in their spare time? Or they don't need an architect? Of course, the show wouldn't be as interesting without it, but the same old same old budget problem is getting a little annoying. First they want to build their dream home as big and pompous as possible But all of them have wrong budget expectations. Then they want it built in months during the worst possible snow and rain storms. And in the end they magically have enough money for it, but it took 4 years instead of 2. I love seeing new ides for houses, learn more about architecture and building problems, but I don't need the personal drama in each episode. Will they have enough money? Will the weather get better? Will they finally move in? That gets a little boring. The architecture itself should be the focus. And the building site.

I've now seen at least thirty individual episodes, and this show is the best of a huge lot of home building shows that are available. There have been at least two water tower adaptations, an early 20thC fantasy castle brought into practical living space while the owner learns how to live with the architectural drawing process, a colourful Spanish luxury home and French historic building conversion built by Brits abroad, and a community co- op housing project built by a group of low-income participants to guarantee them secure rental housing for their young families. The value of seeing this wide range of people and projects is huge - you can see how dreams are realized, the number of concessions and adaptations that must be made along the way, the long-term result when projects are revisited ten years later, and, my favourite, become acquainted with new green building materials and techniques. 1960's building designer Walter Segal's methods led me to an Irish architect Dominic Stevens, who uses inexpensive sheet materials in their original sizes to reduce labour costs. The materials he specifies are only recently available in North America, so this television program has enabled me to specify materials for my architect to investigate and incorporate. The fact that this program has been useful and educational as well as entertaining is a bonus I hadn't anticipated - I'm very glad to have discovered this show. Thanks, Kevin McCloud, for a comprehensive, thoughtful presentation of quality material.