He’s Anthony Burke not Kevin McCloud, and he’s coming for your toilets

With cameras rolling, new host of Grand Designs Australia Anthony Burke congratulated homeowner Laura Ryan on turning her tiny Newtown cottage into an off-the-grid home producing its own power, storing its water and managing waste with a composting toilet.

Smiling for each take, he captured the enthusiasm of Kevin McCloud, the indefatigable host of Grand Designs UK for 25 years.

Anthony Burke on location in Newtown for the new series of Grand Designs Australia. Credit: Edwina Pickles

The yellow shoes could’ve been borrowed from McCloud’s wardrobe, but Burke is not trying to be Kevin Downunder.

Instead, he is trying to be himself, but more so. An affable bloke born on the northern beaches, Burke treasures a surfboard called Maybellene, discovered a love of architecture in the Sistine Chapel and wants to end Australia’s addiction for big bloated homes with too many loos, one episode at a time.

When this masthead arrived to have lunch on location with Burke, Ryan was worrying whether her toilet that turns waste into ash pellets would cope with the party that often ends each episode.

Cinderella, or Cindy, as Ryan calls the toilet, managed the party crowd well, Ryan reported later. Which brings us to a loaded question: If Ryan can survive with one composting toilet, does any Australian home need five or six toilets?

Grand Designs UK host Kevin McCloud.

“No,” said Burke, a professor of architecture at the University of Technology Sydney, who was assistant professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, from 2002 to 2007.

“I can tell you that any more than two toilets in a house is probably getting excessive. I see people designing houses with an ensuite attached to every bedroom, and then plus two.

“I think it’s a little bit stuck in that same way of seeing a large house as a conspicuous wealth thing. We all know [toilets are a] pain to clean, expensive, not well-used … so why would you bother?”

A proponent of smaller, more sustainable homes, among them his own recently renovated 140-square metre terrace in Annandale, Burke wants to show owners building compact dreams from straw, hemp and terracotta.

Burke says earlier series of Grand Designs here and overseas focused on the big spectacular houses, the kind he calls the “big thumping McMansions”.

They often profiled men leaving long-suffering families shivering in tents, suffering cold water and camp toilets while they pursued their dream.

Burke says the new series, premiering on the ABC on Thursday, October 10, has moved with the times. Owners are more diverse: more women, more home builders born overseas, and more families and singles. Homes are smaller, packing more design into a compact footprint. There are still gobsmackingly large projects – such as a “beach shack” with a garage for 12 cars.

Burke, turning 54 next month, says he was lucky enough to figure out what he wanted to do early. “I usually say as soon as I stopped wanting to be a fireman, I wanted to be an architect.”

Anthony Burke is careful not to get food on his white shirt while filming is under way.Credit: Edwina Pickles

He studied art in high school. A year 10 school trip to Italy with a visit the Sistine Chapel was the tipping point. “I was sure at that point that I was interested in the architecture,” he said, even if he wasn’t entirely sure what that was.

He was miffed when he didn’t get his first choice to study architecture at university. The upside was he ended up having the best year in his life studying an arts degree, including fine arts, at Sydney University. It broadened his mind before he switched to architecture.

Despite teaching architecture overseas, taking tours in the US on architecture and serving on a range of design excellence panels, he says it is ironic that he still can’t say he is an architect, his boyhood dream.

In NSW, you may only call yourself an “architect” if you are on the NSW Register of Architects, and you can only be registered if you are practising. As an academic, he rarely gets that chance.

Great Aunty Three’s tofu vermicelli noodle bowl.Credit: Edwina Pickles

In the 45 minutes break for lunch on location, Burke ate carefully to avoid getting the tofu vermicelli noodle bowls from Great Aunty Three in Enmore – crisp, fresh, tasty and $17 each – down his shirt front. (The producers, Fremantle Australia, shouted this reporter and photographer.) Because the production is low-key, there are no wardrobe assistants on hand with fresh shirts. Everyone ate the same takeaway bowls, a routine lunch for the crew of 10.

Between mouthfuls, Burke recalled one of the big turning points in life. He was 22, he and his wife, Kylie, left Australia with money for only four weeks to try life in Hong Kong. He quickly landed a job in a firm with architects from all over the world. Their experiences “unlocked” a world of architecture far beyond Australia.

Later, asked to apply for a job with tenure at Berkeley, he had to decide between practising architecture or becoming an academic. He flew to the United States for the interview, the most “nerve wracking” three days of his life. He jokes that he charmed them with his accent.

His life changed forever in 2012 when an executive from Fremantle Australia, which produces Restoration Australia and Grand Designs for the ABC, saw him presenting at TEDxSydney. It had been a big year for Burke, then co-creative director of the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Anthony Burke recording an episode of Grand Designs Australia with renovator and owner of a composting toilet Laura Ryan.Credit: Edwina Pickles

The supervising executive producer of Grand Designs Australia, Brooke Bayvel, had been looking for someone to replace Stuart Harrison (former host of Restoration Australia). Ten people auditioned; Burke was chosen because he was extremely knowledgeable and amiable and very confident talking on his feet.

Described by one critic as the thinking person’s Scott Cam (host of The Block on Channel Nine), Burke was a hit as host of Restoration Australia and as the co-host with Yasmine Ghoniem of the new show, Grand Designs Transformation.

When ABC secured the rights to screen Grand Designs, Bayvel said the broadcaster asked for Burke to take over from Peter Maddison, the former host of the previous 10 seasons aired on Foxtel.

Despite living in the inner west with his wife and two young adult children, Burke still feels as if his real stomping ground is the northern beaches where he grew up. “My dream situation is probably more about having that little bit of somewhere where you can smell the salt air of the beach ... Maybe you can hear the waves, a bit of that smell going on, and [the home] is not big,” he said.

He has no interest in the kind of celebrity that Kevin McCloud commands. “I don’t really worry about that,” he says.

He agreed to host Grand Designs because it would give him an opportunity to change attitudes. “There’s a job to be done here to help move the middle [the average Australian], and move the conversation slowly. That’s why I’m doing all this. That totally gets me out of bed in the morning.”

For the three shows that he now presents, there are currently 69 episodes under production. “I can lecture to 300 people in an auditorium. Half of them will walk out, going, ‘Yeah, that was great.’ Half will think, ‘shit’.”

“My way of thinking is that if we are reaching a million viewers, on a Sunday or Thursday night, we can introduce and promote really good ideas, one at a time.”

He doesn’t plan to lecture his TV audience, as after all the show is entertainment. And he prefers positive feedback to negative critiques that can leave students in tears.

The producers have banned him from using architectural jargon – important concepts will come with visual explanations. “If we consistently build up exemplars that have these little, little wins that homeowners are making, people start to broaden their capital of ideas, their possibilities somehow become a little bit bigger.”

The sustainability conversation is no longer on the fringes, he says. “We’ve got homeowners going, ‘I want to be sustainable.’ I think that’s important, right?

”We’ve got architects saying, ‘Here’s a dozen ways to do that.’ Then, in between, we’ve got the building industry, which is saying, ‘This going to be hard, and will cost you five times as much.’

“We’ve got this kind of moment where the whole pipeline is aligning. It’s a big ship that we’re turning around here, but it is turning …”

Yet people are still building giant houses: Australians share the podium with the United States for the largest homes, averaging about 230 square metres.

“Some still aspire to a McMansion, and they look at a house and think, ‘The bigger, the better, the more wealth I’m projecting.’ ”

But Burke thinks that attitude is changing. “It’s become a bit gauche. People are saying, ‘We have the biggest houses in the world? You really think that’s a good idea?’ “

Rather than grand designs, his goal is to deliver great ideas. “For example, a hemp house [featured in the new series] is reinventing an old technique, and doing it for sustainability reasons. The house itself is not giant, but my god, it is a great idea … and shows a grand aspiration for what architecture can be and do.”

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