Find
out which building Kevin McCloud would bulldoze
Is there a building you wish had never been built? If so, we want to know
about it. E-mail a picture of your eyesore to property@timesonline.co.uk
and we will showcase the worst.
The short promotional film for Kevin McCloud's new TV series invites us to see
the Grand Designs presenter in a different, more assertive way. McCloud
strides towards a boxing ring, a heavyweight champion's satin robe slung
over his shoulders, flexing his muscles for the fray. This is an image
make-over for a man who is usually seen attempting to establish consensus in
troubled situations and who tends to hold with the Reithian view that TV's
mission of TV is to educate and inform and that entertainment follows from
this.
Yet even though McCloud is not about to start sorting things out in the manner
of an EastEnders character, a tough, physical challenge awaits him. In Grand
Designs Live, a spin-off series, McCloud must build a two-storey house - in
just six days. The property must comply with his own beliefs about
sustainability. This is a creed with so much sway that its four million
followers - Grand Designs' average audience - have been designated by the
Conservatives as a key voter group, likely to be attracted by sound
environmental policies.
The first of the six nightly Grand Designs Live programmes will be broadcast
on Sunday; the series accompanies the Grand Designs Live London exhibition,
which opens tomorrow at ExCel in East London: the McCloud brand supports a
whole industry.
Once this piece of reality TV derring-do is over, McCloud will return to a
much more testing construction contest, his very own HAB (Happiness
Architecture Beauty) development, a micro eco-town near Swindon to which he
has committed lots of his own cash.
McCloud concedes that “in a housing market in meltdown, one is punting a lot
of money on paying architects, seeking planning permission and the rest”.
But although some housebuilders are abandoning new schemes as unviable,
McCloud is pressing ahead with his plans for contextual eco-conscious
dwellings.
He says: “HAB is going well, but scarily and ploddingly and slowly. We will be
applying for planning permission in the late spring. We hope to break earth
in December as our Christmas present to ourselves.”
The HAB enterprise, including the meetings with bankers and local residents,
is to be the subject of a documentary, a chronicle of McCloud's own
conviction that, despite the credit crunch, there is a pent-up longing for
homes that take some pity on the planet and are at one with their setting.
This desire appears to be global: the Grand Designs series, in which McCloud
acts as counsellor, labourer and critic on house-building ventures of the
sustainable variety, has been sold to 137 countries. However, part of its
popularity may also stem from the very British eccentricity of some of those
who have featured in the 97 programmes in the six series pursuing their
idiosyncratic vision of the ideal home. Perhaps for this reason, in France
the multilingual McCloud's voice is dubbed by an actor speaking French with
an exaggeratedly English accent.
HAB's residents will be encouraged to form a community through devices such as
car-sharing clubs. McCloud thinks we should all “own less and share more”, a
view formed before the slowing economy made shows of frugality fashionable.
He is averse to acquisition, disliking supermarkets and forbidding his four
children from shopping at disposable fashion outlets such as Primark. He
says: “I don't need any new clothes, and should I decide that I do the next
jeans that I buy will be made of hemp.”
The layout of the Swindon site will also not be governed by strictly
utilitarian principles so as to give the maximum return. Quite the opposite,
as McCloud explains: “You don't treat a greenfield site like a tabula rasa;
you have to take account of its history, the bumps and the ditches. If you
have a great view, that's what you've got to keep, you have to enshrine that
in the design.”
He professes himself a pupil of the tenets of sustainability formulated by
Common Ground, a charity set up in 1983 by Sue Clifford and Angela King, the
authors of England in Particular. This local distinctiveness rulebook is
admired by green glitterati such as Zac Goldsmith and Hugh
Fearnley-Whittingstall.
McCloud's willingness to state his views on the quality of the built
environment may have become part of brand McCloud, but this does not mean
that they are anything but heartfelt and grounded in knowledge.
He declares: “If you are trying to make a place, you don't make that place
look like anywhere.” It is now commonplace for developers to produce an
unusual design and market it as “iconic”. McCloud finds this offensive. An
“iconic” building such as the Gherkin in the City and the Sage building in
Gateshead can make a place. But the iconic can also be out of place.
He continues: “I am appalled at the lack of contextual design. Every town has
its rash of look-at-me buildings that could be dropped in anywhere. The
iconic can be as offensive as rows of grey sheds.”
But it is not only the self-consciously quirky to which McCloud objects. On
the right, you will discover what he would like to be his deconstruction
project of 2008.
Fact File
Age 48 (he turns 49 on Thursday).
Education Read History of Art and Architecture at Cambridge.
Family Married to Zani, who runs her own online interiors business; they live
in Somerset with their four children.
CV Grand Designs presenter since 1997; presenter on Don't Look Down and Home
Front; runs a design practice; has designed lighting for the Dorchester and
Savoy hotels, Edinburgh Castle and Ely Cathedral; consultant for Fired Earth
and Debenhams homewares; author of design books; ambassador for the WWF and
supporter of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.
Which building would Kevin crush?
Kevin McCloud this week conceded that Grand Designs has encouraged a plethora
of oak-framed homes and white-rendered boxes. But he has not developed an
aversion to the modern - just to homes or other structures that do not fit
their context. For this reason the building that he would most like to
demolish is the Celtic Manor, above, a resort hotel near junction 24 of the
M24 in Newport, Wales. McCloud has seen rather too much of this building
lately, on his way to filming. He describes it thus: “It's a huge monolith
on an American scale which looks like it was about to swallow up the
motorway. It's not contextual - it doesn't even look English.” Paul
Williams, a Celtic Manor manager, says: “The exterior architecture by David
Preece may not be to everybody's taste but its design was influenced by
functionality and the unusual demands of accommodating a 330-bedroom,
five-star hotel. The interior design by Jane Goff, including a striking
atrium lobby, has made a favourable impression on most visitors.” Newport,
meanwhile, can be consoled: one of McCloud's favourites is its 19th-century
transport bridge, a structure that combines elegance and utility.
