The Best of Grand Designs

Synopsis

A complete celebration of Britain's favourite architectural show. Grand Designs is broadcast in over 130 countries and regularly gleans 5 million viewers in the UK. Its success, says Kevin, is due to 'good old-fashioned story telling; of joy and sorrow, torment and triumph, expressed tangibly in the making of a building'. To celebrate fourteen glorious years of film-making, 100 editions of Grand Designs Magazine, 100 separate programmes and ten years of hosting the Stirling Prize, Kevin now delves into the archives to highlight his favourite projects. The Best of Grand Designs charts where domestic architecture has come from, and is moving to, in the first decade or so of a new millennium. And it places people at the centre of the stories of these buildings. Each project is supported by beautiful photography, building plans and Kevin's own personal analysis, together with commentary from his long-time collaborator, Isabel Allen. From the off-grid ecological approach of woodsman Ben Law in Sussex to the quirky experimentalism of Sarah Wigglesworth and Jeremy Till's straw bale house in London, Kevin demonstrates how Grand Designs continues to contribute to television history and why it provides an important legacy for good house design.