Grand Designs is back: Kevin McCloud to reveal his favourite homes of all time in one-off special
An inspiration to armchair self-builders for two decades, today, August 28, Grand Designs kicks off its latest series and celebrates its 20th anniversary with a one-off special.
In the commemorative episode, titled Kevin’s Grandest Design, writer and designer Kevin McCloud, who has presented Grand Designs since it first aired in 1999, will reveal his five favourite buildings from the history of the show – and revisit 20 years’ worth of outfits and hairstyles in the process.
The host says the show has “maintained the same incredible level of energy” since it started. “What we’re lucky enough to film is people embarking on this extraordinary adventure, this great voyage where they learn about themselves.”
Looking forward to the next 20 years, McCloud anticipates a boom in “intelligent building” to combat challenges raised by climate change and urban air pollution. “Our carbon impact can be split between our transport and our domestic use of energy – it’s roughly half and half in the average family,” he said.
“I think we’re going to see a growing relationship between our understanding of what the car is, and the home. For example, many people we film now are putting power wall 10kw/hr batteries into their homes in order to store energy from solar panels - but there’s no reason you can’t plug a car into your home and get it to act as a battery as well.
“In the past 20 years we’ve seen tech come along and it’s been big and unwieldy. What’s happening now is it’s becoming small and smart.”
The presenter said that what unites most designers who appear on the show is their willingness to ignore him. "There's a sort of glint in the eye, a sort of self-righteousness that means whatever I tell them they're going to ignore.
"The fact that I've seen hundreds of projects and have made observations about all of them is of no relevance to most of the self-builders I meet, who are just absolutely convinced that their project is going to be the one that goes right. But where this springs from is hope -the wonderful, human fallibility that we all have, which is hope.
“As long as there are human beings on the planet I think we’ll still have somebody to film because the desire to make a home, to build, is so primal.”
Kevin’s Grandest Design will air on Channel 4 on August 28 at 9pm to launch the new Grand Designs series.