Well, the materials are traditional, but they're being re-worked to be much more user-friendly. I wanted to be environmental, but I didn't want to build a house out of mud or stone or clay that was going to be so primitive and traditional that people wouldn’t want to use that system themselves.
I want people to watch it and think 'That is cool.' The house is one I'd be happy to have grace the screens in Grand Designs. It's all part of the same ethos. It's how we should be building our houses.
The lovely thing is, we've got a big team, lots of enthusiastic researchers, 25-30-year-olds who are all eager to help. So they'll be staying up all night hammering, obviously. And I'll just turn up in the morning and ponce around. No, I shall be there all day, every day. Probably hammering too. I think there's going to be a lot of hammering. I'll be hammering my thumb! It may all go wrong, of course. The design is lovely, but I've just got to make sure I don't cock it up in construction.
It's being built on a site outside ExCeL in East London. So we can't leave it there. I think it's going to go to the Building Research Establishment, and they're going to prod it and poke it and see whether it really does stand up.
Yeah, exactly. We're going to rebuild it there, seal it, and offer it as an interesting constructional alternative.
Yeah. There are several different categories. This is really how the whole series came about. When Channel 4 suggested doing something for TV around the exhibition, I suggested doing something around the awards. So we've got five categories, with three shortlisted homes in each one. And we’ve got a great judging panel, including George Ferguson, President of the RIBA, the architect Will Alsop, Ken Shuttleworth, who designed the Gherkin, and Wayne Hemingway. And we'll be asking the viewers to vote for the ones they really love.
Want to be a self-build guru? Then read on....
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