By default the houses featured on Channel 4’s Grand Designs are usually large, intricate, unique and expensive.
It’s not often in the show that three-bed semis are highlighted as great architectural innovations, while building a house from scratch in the middle of a field is not something that just anyone can achieve.
However, Kevin McCloud, the David Attenborough of building programmes and the show’s host, feels the programme has been unfairly pilloried for snobbishness.
Defending Grand Designs, which returns for its 11th series on Wednesday with a complex renovation of a derelict mill cottage, McCloud said: “It has been criticised for being elitist - representing just a tiny part of the market which the vast majority of people can never aspire to, but I think that criticism completely misses the point.”
He explained: “Grand Designs may be consisting of 100 odd projects, but there are 5 million people that watch it and of those people, only a tiny fraction of them will ever do that kind of self-build project. Most will want to build a 3- bed family home but what Grand Design does, is explain the demands and difficulties of that journey – at whatever scale.”
McCloud, whose favourite ever Grand Design is a home built from recycled newspaper and trees from the wood in which it stands, costing just £28,000, continued: “It doesn’t represent as a nation, but it does demonstrate an object point and a benchmark in terms of quality of construction, approach etc.
“It demonstrates the need to use really good people and craftsmen to get what they want and demonstrates that you can get fantastic value for money whilst doing it... It's not about half a million or three-quarters of a million pounds. It's the brutality of those sorts of figures that stops people in their projects."
Grand Designs Live takes place from 7 – 9th October at Birmingham’s NEC, hosted by Kevin McCloud. Grand Designs Live offers everything you need to design, build, furnish and decorate your home. www.granddesignslive.com