There's no place like home! (Grand Designs)

Member Name: Picasso

Product:	Grand Designs
Date:	08/03/03 (175 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of ideas

Disadvantages: None

Of all the current rash of home-based TV programmes, be it buying, renovating, decorating, the best must surely be "Grand Designs". Hosted by the ebullient Kevin McCloud, architechure's answer to Lloyd Grosman, the programme is a must for anyone who dreams of breaking free of the design constraints of others and living in a home that is as individual as we all are.


The range of projects and the ordinariness of the people with the big ideas are the key to the continued success of the series: last week we saw woodsman Ben design a house made of wood for £25.000; this week a couple converted a 150 year old barn in Surrey for £450.000; earlier in the series, a couple converted an old water treatment works into an ultra modern living space of massive proportions. Whatever the project, you can't help but admire these people who refuse to accept the prevailing notion that we all want to live on estates and are living proof that Britain is acquiring some of the "Can Do" culture from across the Atlantic.


Whilst the enthusiasm of the people behind these contracts is infectious, Kevin McCloud presents the programme in a way that inevitably mirrors the projects themselves: initial determination and hope, early euphoria puntured by delays and setbacks, timetable stoppages giving way to scepticism about deadlines; but then the triumphant outcome. The actual project is probably immaterial for McCloud, one suspects. His enthusiasm for the whole self-build thing shines through and his disdain for the ordinary and the conventional leaves you thinking, "Could I do that too?" And that's probably the whole point!

Summary: TV programme about houses