Design for life

Our Nicolette caught up with Grand Designs presenter Kevin McCloud to talk lions, sheds and minimalist cubes.

It seems that Kevin McCloud is destined to be forever surrounded by builders. The presenter talked to us while preparing for the Grand Designs Live exhibition in London, and unsurprisingly, things were a little hectic. "Exhibition spaces never look like they're supposed to until about ten minutes before the show is due to start," says Kevin. "It's all madness and chaos and people hammering things."

 

Eco warrior

After so many years of focusing on building projects - Grand Designs has been running for 14 years now - most of us would look for ways to distract ourselves from putting houses together. Evidently, Kevin is a true enthusiast. His latest TV series, Man Made House, sees him create a shed from scratch in a bid to create an eco-friendly, sustainable place to live. "It's more of a hobby really, and I don't usually put my hobbies on TV, but I thought this would be interesting as an experiment," says Kevin. He's a keen champion for sustainability, and the presenter says that in another life he would have liked to work with nature. "Looking back, I'd love to have been a farmer. Saying that, though, I am working with the human habitat and I suppose there are similarities!"

 

Kevin recalls that his brush with wildlife while filming his most recent series, Man Made Home, was a little too close for comfort. "We were at Longleat Safari Park hunting for lion faeces to use in the natural gas fuel tank we'd built, but we had to get quite close to the fence to get the best bits. The lions were able to get their paws through the fence so it was already scary, but it got worse when the alpha female started to dig under the fence, flinging bucketfuls of earth everywhere. We asked the ranger how far down into the earth the fence went, and he said it didn't go down at all! We scarpered pretty quickly after that."

 

Home remedies

So, it seems that Kevin will focus on homes for people for the time being. His work with human habitats goes much further than presenting a TV show about houses, though. Kevin set up HAB - which stands for Happiness, Architecture, Beauty - a few years ago, and since then the initiative has finished its project in Swindon and the team are looking for new locations. "I set it up out of frustration in the lack of quality housing that's beautiful and saves energy, and I thought instead of just talking about it I might as well do something about it. The housing project features shared streets with space for cars, cyclists and pedestrians, as well as shared gardens and fruit trees so that people can save money. I suppose it's my proudest achievement really. It's good to be involved in schemes like this."

 

Retro or modern?

Kevin says that the design world doesn't actually change as much as people think it does. "I find that at the turn of a century everyone looks for the next big idea and in the end they end up just reproducing what came from the last century. I'd be thinking "Come on guys, this idea was out 75 years ago, this isn't new!" With Grand Designs we'll still go off and film a white cube with a glass wall every once in a while, an idea which funnily enough was first built in the 1920s, but we're finding it's happening less and less, thank goodness!" He laughs.

So, what's the dream maker's idea of a dream house? "White walled minimalism!" He jokes. "No, it's tricky to say what my ideal house would look like, as at the end of the day the best house reflects you as a person and where it is," explains Kevin. "The exciting thing about Grand Designs was that we got to join people on their journey, but the design always, always changes over the time it takes to build the home. Sometimes that's down to architectural issues, sometimes it's because your feelings towards it changes. The idea grows as you do. If someone came up to me and said that they wanted to build a minimalist cube, and they'd wanted to build it since they were eight, and their design had never changed, I'd be a bit worried and disturbed."

 

Kevin's book, The Best of Grand Designs, is out now and is available at all good book shop, RRP £25.

 

Kevin's top tips to improve your home (without knocking it down):

• To save hundreds on energy, super insulate the loft and draught proof the whole house. Also invest in secondary glazing - you don't have to knock your existing windows out and it really makes such a difference. Even investing in decent curtains and insulated window shutters can help to bring the bills down.
• Invest in storage - just block up one wall from floor to ceiling with shelves and cover it with sliding doors. You might think that you're losing a lot of space, but that's nothing compared to the space your saving from hiding away the volume of stuff inside. So much of our lives is spent dealing with stuff! Spend some time sorting through it all and get rid of what you don't need or use.
• One of my pet hates is unwashed windows. Cleaning your windows doubles the amount of light in a room, and really freshens it up. It's like redecorating but with less effort!

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