Grand Designs?

I'm a closet Grand Designs fan. I'm not particularly into architecture or buildings, and I have no desire to build my own home. But I love seeing the way people think creatively about how and where they live, and there's nothing like a good story of triumph against the odds.

But more recently I've found Grand Designs a pretty unsettling programme to watch. Against a background of world-wide recession and increasing austerity I've found that the financial excesses of people often driven by an almost obsessive but frequently unconscious desire to make some kind of statement has left me with a fairly unpleasant taste in my mouth.

The example of this I've found most difficult came with a build re-visited in the currently series. Roger Gaukroger's decision to build in the Lake District was motivated by the fact that as a child growing up he and his family had never had somewhere they could really call home. But rather than choosing to create a modest, comfortable house, he designed an enormous building several times larger than the three-bedroom dwelling which already stood on the plot. Even at the outset he only had funding for 25% of the projected cost, and as the build descended into chaos Roger was threatened with bankruptcy and had to seriously consider putting the far-from-finished house on the market.

Although the project was eventually completed and the Gaukrogers were able to move in, Roger ended up with debts he would never be able to pay off therefore leaving his children to inherit not a home but a burden of financial responsibility that completely undermined the whole reason for building.

Interestingly, while Kevin McLeod and, by extension, the programme's producers, are happy to affirm or criticise the choices made by participants around ethical building materials, conservation issues and investing in local or specialist craftsmanship, they seem unwilling to challenge financial choices beyond asking leading questions about budgets and borrowing.

However, this week's episode has restored some of my faith in the Grand Designs raison d'etre! In another re-visit Kevin returned to Cumbria to visit Alan Dawson, a master steel worker who had spent over twenty years creating a new prefabricated building system. With his steel works under threat from the financial crisis he chose to commission his own team to build his house with the dual aim of keeping them in employment and essentially using the building as a showcase for the ailing firm and its craftspeople.

Clearly this approach had significant risks but it seemed to me that these were genuinely motivated by a sense of responsibility for the welfare of others, and a willingness to think imaginatively about strategies for sustaining a business in challenging times.

Unfortunately the business didn't survive but a new and wholly unexpected twist underpinned the almost pastoral element of this project. The newly patented approach to construction had attracted a lot of attention, including catching the eye of a New Zealand designer who had seen the potential for the system to form the basis of new earth-quake resistant buildings. His plan was to take the system back to Christchurch to explore its potential in contributing to rebuilding the city after this year's destruction.

Now that really is a grand design.