Returning: Grand Designs NZ

The Free to Air premiere of Season 8 of Grand Designs New Zealand hosted by Tom Webster debuts this week on ABC.

Ever since he was a child, Mark Ahearn has loved holidaying in the Abel Tasman National Park in New Zealand. Now based in Perth, Western Australia, he and his Australian wife Liz have decided to take a year out from their hectic lives to build their own family home for themselves and their toddler Winter, overlooking Ligar Bay.

After a few false starts, they’ve put the reins of their specialised concrete business and their two busy cafes into the hands of others and made the move to New Zealand so Mark can embark on building their legacy family home.

Their Christchurch based architect Greg Young has designed a home for their steep site that is a modernist take on the Kiwi bach, comprising of four interconnected glass boxes angled to take in the breath-taking views of Abel Tasman.

While Greg is confident in Mark’s ability to pull his build off, he’s also under no illusion that there is the risk that it could all go catastrophically wrong.

Ominously, it’s almost like the universe reads his mind…

8:30pm Thursday February 29 on ABC.