Amazing Grand Designs Episodes
Grand Designs has remained popular for 15 years and through more than 150 episodes, so choosing the best designs is a difficult challenge. Kevin McCloud weighed in on some of his favourites back in 2011, and everyone has an opinion. Here are our picks for the 5 best Grand Designs. Which ones would you add?
1. Known as the “Modernist Sugar Cube”, Tom Watkins and Darron Copping’s gorgeous home on the Sussex coast was featured in a 2004 episode and was on the market in 2014 for £1.5 million.
This dazzling white home was designed to accommodate the couple’s two large dogs and to reflect their love of art and surfing.
2. In 2009 architect Richard Hawkes built the home he and his wife Sophie dubbed the “Eco Arch House.” The couple moved to the Kent countryside after leaving London and wanted to create an environmentally sustainable lifestyle.
The most unique feature of the home is a brick arch that forms a backbone and provides structural support while minimising the use of materials. The green technologies incorporated to the home provide most of the energy required for daily life and the couple grows their own food, further reducing their ecological footprint.
You can watch the full episode here.
3. The “14th Century Castle” episode from 2007 stepped away from the modern and into ancient history.
Francis and Karen Shaw moved to this fourteenth-century castle with its crumbling walls in North Yorkshire with their two daughters. A labour of love followed, combining reconstruction, conversation, and repair over four years time to transform the structure into a welcoming home.
You can watch the full episode here.
4. The 100th episode of Grand Designs was celebrated with a stunningly ambitious project, a conversion of a nineteenth-century derelict water tower located in central London into a luxury property. The project began with an extensive conservation effort for the tower, which had been abandoned for decades.
Leigh Osborne and Graham Voce then incorporated the existing structure, a tower 30-m tall with 1.5-m thick walls, into their new vision with a low modern addition and a lift. They cut away large portions of the existing water tower and installed black glass, creating an elevated room with stunning 360-degree views of the city. This home was also on the market in 2014, at an asking price of £5.2 million.
5. The “Woodman’s Cottage”, featured in Series 3, is remarkable for being built sustainably from local materials.
Ben Law had spent the past decade living in caravans and tents in the West Sussex woods, and when he decided to build a more permanent home he and his friends felled their own trees and built this beautiful structure by hand.
The house was designed to be flexible, and he later built an addition for his children. You can watch the full episode here.