Last Night's Grand Designs.
- Thread starter Weekender
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Rob998
Scimmia Nordoccidentale
A constantly inflating budget for his w4nk fantasy house, so not too dissimilar.
Funk
pfm Member
Just watched this tonight. Very sad episode although credit to the guy he held his hands up to the fact that his over ambition lead to the breakdown of his marriage. I doubt that even when finished he'd want to live in it now though; far from being a happy family home it's a vast monument to the fact he lost sight of the most important thing in life. Even if he had finished it and he and his wife were still together that's a huge place for two people to rattle around in.
The 'Eye' property next door showed what he was capable of - that looked like a tasteful and well-designed home, arguably far better suited to a couple whose kids have moved out to start their lives. It also had wonderful views and I'd be happy to live somewhere like that (although not at the £3m asking price!).
The 'Eye' property next door showed what he was capable of - that looked like a tasteful and well-designed home, arguably far better suited to a couple whose kids have moved out to start their lives. It also had wonderful views and I'd be happy to live somewhere like that (although not at the £3m asking price!).
Thymopathy
New Member
The Photo of Modest Family Home is looking great.
vuk
\o/ choose anarchy
i just watched the episode (downloaded for youtube). here are some first impressions...
1- the vanity of the family, right from the start, was very unsettling. even if i play along with capitalist meritocracy fallacies, i would expect the clever people who benefit from it to be somewhat good at gauging public opinion and not flaunting personal success and ambition. this family has no shame and deserves no sympathy.
2- although 2 MILLION or4 MILLION sounds like a lot, the scale of the project seemed at least 5 times the price of what i would imagine on the new jersey coast with about 1% of the the natural beauty. doesn't make sense at all.
3- the main narrator of the show is as slimy and constricted as a fox news personality.
1- the vanity of the family, right from the start, was very unsettling. even if i play along with capitalist meritocracy fallacies, i would expect the clever people who benefit from it to be somewhat good at gauging public opinion and not flaunting personal success and ambition. this family has no shame and deserves no sympathy.
2- although 2 MILLION or4 MILLION sounds like a lot, the scale of the project seemed at least 5 times the price of what i would imagine on the new jersey coast with about 1% of the the natural beauty. doesn't make sense at all.
3- the main narrator of the show is as slimy and constricted as a fox news personality.
I also thought that it was a very sad episode. Agree with all that you have said.
Upstream there was a comment regarding GD being all about expensive houses, which I think has generally been the case, but not always. Every now and again a very interesting and challenging and much cheaper design is shown, and that makes for an interesting watch. One of the earliest programs was about a self build coop where they learnt to build houses together as a group, whilst generally holding down jobs. They showed a brief clip recently and everyone that built there, still lives there (maybe 20 years later) as noone wants to move. So cheaper approaches can create great solutions that people really want to live in.
My daughter sent me this link:
https://www.theguardian.com/artandd...reet-norwich-council-houses#comment-134110814
Normally the RIBA Stirling seems to go to some very big and expensive architecture, but this time has gone to something much smaller and relevant to local communities, which hopefully more councils with take on board and push to develop (funding, location problems to be got around).
Funk
pfm Member
I think the balance generally is good, although the bigger and more expensive projects will inevitably provide the most drama and tension (which is what GD now sadly thrives on). The show used to be all about the buildings, digging into the technology, design and detail far more. Over the years it's become a little too much about the people, their back/sob stories and what happens to them rather than the properties. I don't really care for the people or their marriages or their illnesses etc (sounds harsh but the reality is that that sort of thing is none of my business) but I AM interested in the technological/logistical challenges of building a 'grand design'. SO many GDs have glossed over the actual builds, often going from a bare shell to a finished walk-round in the space of a few minutes. Where is everything that happened inbetween?
I must admit to chuckling when the ground works contractor talked about having to Google for what equipment to use...!
Well, of course, it's telly. Not many people are as interested in the engineering as you and I may be. They want a quick fix "Ooh, that's nice, wouldn't it be lovely to have a view like that? Oh, I don't like what they've done in the kitchen though" Not many people want 20 minutes of the architect designing the drains layout or the brickies working out which bond to tie in the internal corners.
It's like me and food programmes, when they venture in the factory. Sod that, I get that every day at work. Recently I saw one where they asked chefs to replicate Monster Munch. Now I know that immediately, even though it's not my specific bit of the industry. You need a snack extruder on a maize base, then flavour on an oil carrier or maybe a dextrose/maltodextrin carrier. Without the extruder, bloody hard work. The chefs were nowhere close, they had no idea. I'm sure it made for good TV but I couldn't watch it, it would be like asking me to replicate a computer with what I had in the garage. However the audience isn't those who understand the manufacturing (or building) process, it's everyone else.
Funk
pfm Member
The thing is, it used to be more about the engineering. The same happened with Top Gear, it got dumbed down. The moment I knew I'd lost interest in TG was when May was about to explain why a Veyron SuperSport needs the equivalent of a Golf GTIs' worth of extra power to go 10mph faster and they cut to Clarkson in the studio saying, "Boooooooooorriiiiiiiiiing..." There are precious few programmes that cater to those of us who have a deeper interest in certain things. I don't want 'just light entertainment' (eg. Clarkson crashing his banger into May's banger...again...).
The vast majority of stuff I watch now is on YouTube!
foxwelljsly
Me too, I ate one sour too.
I'd much rather watch a car show with just Edd China and Fuzz Townshend going into detail about exactly what happens in their respective workshops. Unfortunately, its actually far more expensive to shoot 10 minutes of that than 10 minutes of dicking about and not enough want to watch it. Although I secretly suspect that Edd China might be a bit of a dick.
Funk
pfm Member
O/T, but YouTube channels I've been watching Bad Obsession Motorsport's 'Project Binky', Harry's Garage, Mighty Car Mods, Rich Rebuilds, Hoovie's Garage and RetroPower's custom Escort Mk1 build for Gordon Murray. And that's just the car stuff; I'm also watching Clickspring make an Antikythera Machine and Leo Goolden rebuilding his 100+ year old cutter 'Tally-Ho' amongst other things! Far more interesting stuff online than on TV these days (I ditched my licence fee nearly a decade ago and haven't looked back).
martin clark
pinko bodger
Exactly this. I'm an architect and I cannot watch GD, and whenever I last tried up to about 15yrs ago* it had me feeling like shouting at the telly within 5mins in every episode for multiple reasons.
I am actually surprised it has take this long to have one go so completely pear-shaped. Very sad for all involved, obviously, but I do think it always was going to happen sooner or later given some of the egos and the repeated feature theme of aimless management of project/project-risk/programme/cost/ etc manifest from the earliest episodes: the grandest of designs (in any endeavour) is nothing without delivery
* i.e. up to the point I binned TV.
(edit for typo & clarity 9pm)
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Ibbots
pfm Member
I do remember one episode where a young chap living in a yurt or something similar in his own wood and making a living making charcoal built his own house on a tiny budget. It was beautiful and quite moving. Of the rest all I can remember just a mash up of smug entitled types cocking it up but I have not watched it for years.
A lot of people seem to want to build massive buildings just to house a few people and then wonder why they have overspent or cannot finish their warehouse ! In this episode , the 2nd house he built and finished was plenty big enough so why have build the lighthouse with a massive cost just for the driveway bound to end in bankruptcy
david ellwood
Kirabosi Kognoscente
The Kathryn Tyler episode is amongst my favourites.
Along with the Steph Wilson house, Grand designs occasionally gets it right.
Along with the Steph Wilson house, Grand designs occasionally gets it right.
Because it's called Grand Designs, not "Some bloke builds quite a nice house, could do with being a bit bigger but, you know, money doesn't grow on trees, especially if you want interesting design features" .
It's all about making a statement, and it's a sight easier to do that with a 500 sqm monolith than it is a 3 bedder in Market Town on Sea. To do it with a small house takes a lot of design skill. It's like the old engineering adage (Henry Ford?) that "any fool can make a car for 10,000 dollars. It takes a n engineer to build one for 500" .
MikeMA
pfm Member
I sort of half watched last nights repeat before it dawned on me that this was the episode being discussed here!
Without knowing anything about the project management structure or the contracting methods used - so I may be tallking b*******s here - my initial reaction when I started watching was "oh dear, this is a substantial civil engineering project with an architect in charge", not always a happy combination in my experience. Where was the civil engineer? Did he and the architect talk to each other?
I was horrified too that the ground and ancillary works, which seemed to account for most of the cost and cost overruns, seem to have been budgeted for almost entirely on the basis of provisional sums. While this is inevitable to some degree with work of this type, it made me wonder about the level of pre planning, site surveys etc., especially when the groundworks contractor said he'd had to google to find the right rock cutting bits to use on the slate. It gave the impression that the slate hade been a big surprise and he was learning on the job.
I did end up feeling sorry for the family. What a disaster.
Without knowing anything about the project management structure or the contracting methods used - so I may be tallking b*******s here - my initial reaction when I started watching was "oh dear, this is a substantial civil engineering project with an architect in charge", not always a happy combination in my experience. Where was the civil engineer? Did he and the architect talk to each other?
I was horrified too that the ground and ancillary works, which seemed to account for most of the cost and cost overruns, seem to have been budgeted for almost entirely on the basis of provisional sums. While this is inevitable to some degree with work of this type, it made me wonder about the level of pre planning, site surveys etc., especially when the groundworks contractor said he'd had to google to find the right rock cutting bits to use on the slate. It gave the impression that the slate hade been a big surprise and he was learning on the job.
I did end up feeling sorry for the family. What a disaster.
