Returning: Grand Designs

Kevin McCloud returns with new episodes of Grand Designs next week, in the profile slot of 7:30pm Sunday night. That might be a conflict for some fans of the show against profile shows such as Dancing with the Stars and MasterChef Australia.

These episodes aired in the UK last September.

Design expert Kevin McCloud returns with a new series of Grand Designs, the series that charts the process of ambitious design and building projects in the UK. Kevin follows the projects from the initial details of architectural drawings and planning, to the long and often arduous task of turning the designs into dream homes.

Architectural designer Lincoln Miles and his wife, artist Lisa Traxler, want to build their own home on the Isle of Wight, but good land is hard to find. They come up with an increasingly popular solution: bungalow gobbling find a bungalow on a prime piece of land and, in this case, surrounded by unspoilt ancient woodland, upscale it to suit your needs.

Lincoln and Lisa are recycling the existing 70s bungalow, even keeping some of its retro features like the stone clad chimney, but extending it to exploit the natural setting. A three storey ‘tower’ extension will give them living space opening onto the forest, and a bedroom that nestles in the canopy with treetop views, whilst a single storey studio extension will allow them to work from home. The old bungalow and new studio extension will be clad in an undulating layer of scorched larch planks, which echo the bark of the surrounding trees. The taller tower extension will be clad with agricultural cement board, usually used on cowsheds, which will be smothered with yoghurt and cow pat to encourage mosses and lichens to grow.

Lincoln and Lisa hope to transform their stone clad bungalow into a creative structure that sensitively responds to its woodland setting. But the extensions are huge, and by using unconventional techniques and materials, no one is quite sure what this building will end up looking like.

It returns 7:30pm Sunday on ABC1.