0/5

Returning: Grand Designs Australia

Season 9 of home rebuild series is returning -including with a home that went up in smoke.

A long-awaited Season Nine of Grand Designs Australia is coming to LifeStyle in late March -and includes a home that went up in smoke just weeks before homeowners were to move in.

Architect Peter Maddison is back to follow eight new homeowners from Queensland, NSW, Victoria, Tasmania, in the series produced by Fremantle.

“This series is about patience, tenacity and it’s about tragedy… Romeo and Juliet have nothing on this season. Ten years on and I continue to be amazed by these homeowner’s imagination, determination and bravery,” he says.

“Being an architect is in my DNA and I find that there will never be an end to invention. The most important thing we put in our lives is our home, and this series is another example of the importance of the home and the ingenuity, inner strength and the conviction in design which drives them,” Peter says.

Grand Designs Australia follows the remarkable journeys of these ambitious and resilient architectural trailblazers who have pushed their finances and their families to the limit in their quest to create remarkable one-off homes.

With budgets ranging from $210,000 to over $2 million, a record breaking seven-year build and a heartbreaking build which went up in smoke weeks before the homeowners were due to move in.

The backdrops are as diverse as they are stunning, as Peter traverses the country, meeting and supporting the homeowners as they embark on what turns out to be rollercoaster rides of passion, creativity, and endurance.

From the design fanatic who spends seven years perfecting his radical extension to a heritage cottage on Sydney Harbour, to a hip young couple on a tight budget with plans to build an edgy house on Tasmania’s Tamar River, the common themes are innovation and determination, with some spectacular results.

Extreme design is a common theme, whether it’s a space-age Queenslander in Brisbane, a Mediterranean style concrete bunker in inner city Perth, a sandstone church with a radical copper box extension on the Hawkesbury River in NSW, or a tiny Hawthorn terrace transformed into an underground tardis. But it is the Melbourne architects who convert a derelict junk yard into an environmental passive house who face the ultimate challenge, suffering years of hardship to build their dream home only to see it ravaged by fire three weeks before completion.

Grand Designs Australia is produced by Fremantle Australia exclusively for Foxtel on the LifeStyle channel.

Wednesdays at 8.30pm from March 31 on LifeStyle.

Leave a Reply