Grand Designs celebrates its 100th episode

14 August 2012

This Autumn, Channel 4's flagship design programme Grand Designs will celebrate 100 episodes as the show returns with a brand new series.  Designer and writer Kevin McCloud is back to follow the structural, financial and emotional journeys of ambitious couples as they bravely embark on the adventure of a lifetime - building their own homes.

After 100 episodes and 100 individual projects, these extreme homemakers are still risking it all to experiment with technology, architecture and their own lifestyles.  There are volatile neighbours, tight budgets, romantic restorations, the rotting corpses of 2000 pigeons, and of course, the ubiquitous battle with the elements; yet presenter Kevin is there through it all, to offer words of encouragement and wisdom, and to raise the occasional eyebrow...

This new series features nine unique and extraordinary builds including a 99ft water tower, a minimalist glass box, and the world's first computer cut home.

Kevin McCloud says: "100 episodes, getting on for 15 years in the making and still enormous fun to film.  I'm amazed and grateful that so many people still enjoy Grand Designs.  And I'm enormously proud to be supported by a tight-knit team of gifted television makers who believe in proper old-fashioned story-telling and documentary making.  Long Live Grand Designs!"

The series, which starts on Channel 4 in September, will also revisit some of Grand Designs' previously unfinished builds to see what progress has been made and how they have finally become homes.

This series features a wide range of innovative builds including:

 

Hertfordshire
University professors Celia and civil partner Diana want a state-of-the-art modern home to retire to.  Having renovated several older homes, they are now for the first time building their home from scratch.  Not content with all the usual hurdles that involves, they've decided to pioneer an entirely new way of building and will construct the world's first computer cut house.  A shipping container will be based on the site, inside which a computer operated router will cut individual building blocks from timber with almost perfect accuracy. It's the equivalent of a very large Lego kit.  Celia and Diana are bravely acting as guinea pigs for a team of young industrial designers who came up with the system but have never built a house before.  There's nothing that these two ladies have ever done that can adequately prepare them for what lays ahead.

 

Ireland
Actor Sean Simons attempts to fulfil his boyhood dream of turning Cloontykilla castle in the west of Ireland into his home. Having first seen the castle as a boy of 7 playing in the woods, Sean fell in love with this romantic nineteenth century folly. Now almost 40 years later, he's finally raised the money to transform this crumbling listed ruin into his ideal fantasy castle complete with a reconstructed medieval interior and, if Sean gets his way, open air jacuzzi in the tower.

 

Camden
Award winning architect Henning, has waited for many years to build his family a home that he calls "a house of our time".  Henning has a love of combining new structures within historically established buildings and his new home will be no exception.  His vision is to create a zen, live/work space in a most unusual but beautiful industrial building - an old joinery workshop.  Moments away from the hustle and bustle of busy Camden life, Henning and wife, Alice, a film producer who is also project-managing the build, are keen to create a serene haven for their family and transform this broken old workshop into a cool contemporary industrial home.

 

Brixton
Head of Art Production at an ad agency, Mary, and her architect husband, Carl, have spent their energy for the last 20 years building and renovating houses for themselves - none of which they've truly fallen in love with.  Fed up with living on building sites, they've decided to give it one last go and build the house which will last them for the rest of their lives.  For this couple, there forever home is an extreme, stark but habitable light box made of cast glass, steel and concrete set amongst the traditional Victorian housing of Brixton.

 

Kennington
Man-about-town Leigh, is converting a mid-nineteenth Century water tower in central London into one of the most lavish and eccentric residences in the city.  Built in 1867, the tower is in a rough state of disrepair, the insides of the building littered with the rotting corpses of upwards of 2000 pigeons. To compound matters, as a potential conversion, it's not exactly capacious or appealing: it's Grade II listed, its walls are five feet thick and its 99ft tall. But for the flamboyant Leigh, it's about sticking out from the crowd. He's a risk taker, somebody who does things differently, and this philosophy permeates every level of the design.

 

Shiplake
Ever since they got married seven years ago, I.T specialist Nigel and his wife, hypnotherapist Lysette, have dreamed of designing and building their own modern house from scratch, something of the 21st Century that is theirs.  After finding their perfect waterside plot near Henley on Thames, Nigel and Lysette now face an on-going battle to get their dream design built.  Not only do they confront the enormous challenges of holding back the River Thames whilst they get their home built, but their strikingly contemporary design hasn't gone down too well with the locals. Can Lysette and Nigel win support for their modern palace amongst the mock Tudor boat houses on this rather conservative stretch of the Thames?

 

Skye
Artists (and bus driver) Rebecca and Indi moved to Skye three years ago. In their own words, they are entwined in a ‘love affair' with this most dramatic of Hebridean landscapes. Now they want to build a modern house and studio that will focus on the landscape around them and allow them to realise all their artistic ambitions. Despite their modest budget, it is a piece of considered, beautifully detailed, high-end architecture which will challenge the local traditions and attitudes.

(Running order and dates still to be confirmed).

Grand Designs is a Boundless (a part of Fremantlemedia UK) production for Channel 4.

 

Notes to Editors:

FremantleMedia UK is the UK production arm of FremantleMedia, the global production and content business of the RTL Group, Europe's largest television and radio company.  FremantleMedia UK, comprises of a group of labels, Talkback, Retort, Boundless, Thames and Newman Street, which produce some of the UK's most successful shows.   The labels are headed up by some of the UK's leading creative talent including Dan Baldwin, Jon Rolph, Patrick Holland, Richard Holloway and Paul Marquess.  Across the group the labels provide award winning programming for all major terrestrial, digital channels and digital outlets.  With an unparalleled range of programming including:  The X Factor, Britain's Got Talent, Celebrity Juice, Take Me Out, Over The Rainbow, Blockbusters, The Apprentice, You're Fired, Can't Take It With You, Four Rooms, Grand Designs, Great British Railway Journeys, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, The IT Crowd, QI, The Rob Brydon Show, The Sinking of the Laconia, Kidnap and Ransom and Holy Flying Circus  - the Group has aired over 450 hours of programming on terrestrial TV in the past 12 months alone.    

www.fremantlemediauk.com