Kevin McCloud's not-so-grand designs

IT'S the show that makes everyone want to build their own self-sustaining home in an obscure corner of the world, but Grand Designs host Kevin McCloud says he's seen some homes that have made him "weep".

Not all of the homes on Grand Designs have been as grand as McCloud was hoping.

NO MATTER how much money you make or whether you're renting or buying, we all deserve a little grandeur.

At least that is the opinion of Kevin McCloud, the man behind the hugely successful series which follows architectural dreamers who create sometimes vast and beautiful environments seemingly out of nothing.

In town for the Grand Designs Live expo McCloud told news.com.au that architecture is not a rarefied discipline,

"It's for all of us," he said. "It's not an elitist venture, it's not art history. It's not international finance. Buildings are around us all the time."

"The Opera House is a peculiar example because it put Australia on the international stage," McCloud said.

"It didn't necessarily change the quality of life for Australians in their every day housing, so in that way it's very different but as a piece of public architecture it's just fantastic."

The architect and designer said he hopes his show has encouraged people not to go out and build another great "McMansion", because the mantra of the show is quite the opposite of that.

"Grand Designs is about designing a space and using it intelligently and cleverly to suggest things," he said. "You can do great things on a small scale."

That doesn't mean there haven't been some real doozies during the show's run.

In fact there are some that have made him "weep".

He says he still has nightmares over a houseboat project Grand Designs covered in the early years of the series.

"It was a boat, it wasn't even a house, "he said. "They had no drawings and no designers and they just made it up as they went along.

"It was a very scary process for me."

Other equally scary projects include a 16th century Guild Hall that was being converted into a home.

"The owners did some amazing things to conserve the building like repairing the stained glass but they also encased some of it in concrete," McCloud said.

"It made me weep".

In fact, McCloud's exact words at the time were that the couple, Simon and Jill Bennett, had "dragged the 16th century chapel kicking and screaming into the 21st century".

Then there was the man who spent $2.5 million on a "modernist palace" called "The Curve" and ruined it all by mounting a Ducati 916 Biposto motorcycle on the wall. Plus who could forget the family who installed a disco floor in the bottom level of their $2 million home.

"Both of those were about 6/10s, maybe," McCloud said.

Believe it or not Grand Designs doesn't go looking for disasters, if anything it goes out of its way to avoid "negative tele".

"We do a lot of due diligence," McCloud said. "We send out researchers with cameras and if the projects are weak or the people are trouble or just not quite right, we won't touch it.
"We're not there to see bad things happen," he said. "I don't want to see failure. I don't want to see projects falter. It's important that we see great work and whether we feature it depends on the calibre of people and the calibre of the project."

One of McCloud's favourites is a little house on the Isle of Skye in Scotland built by two artists.

This episode is proof you don't need a lot of space or money to make something beautiful.

It's an incredibly modest home, built out of simplicity by a couple who saved for 30 years to be able to afford a one bedroom home on the remote coast.

"That was a fabulous, simple piece of contemporary design and of contemporary architecture," he said.

"It was a really great example of how to build a small affordable house that was still luxurious. What it offered was a very, very modest, low cost building. It was very lovely."

Kevin McCloud will be hosting a series of talks, panels and Q & As at Grand Designs Live in Melbourne from the 25th to the 27th of October.