Novel Approach to Design - Kevin McCloud's Grand Plan

A Home is Worth A Thousand Words

That crafty Kevin McCloud has gone to great lengths to conceal what must be, surely, his next blockbusting step. I sense in his series of TV's Grand Designs a clever apprenticeship for the full flowering of his creative genius - the writing of grand fiction.

Take, if you will, the word 'fiction'. Hold it firmly in your mind as you picture the elements of Grand Designs' episodes: the people, the inspiration and intended direction, the journey to realisation, the dream made manifest and Kevin's estimation of the project's achievements. Inherent in all these elements is the essence of fiction - unreality.

My case, undoubtedly brilliant in conception, rests on hard-nosed stuff like this:

The people are dreamers - that is, they construct a false future based on hope, imagination and good luck. This is our ideal scenario, they say. We know that with good will, effort and obliging, otherwise-fickle forces (eg. weather, local authorities) we can create our vision. And I admire them. Just as well they start high because the process is enough to bring low the most optimistic dreamer, to destroy the most determined of fictions.

Inspiration is insubstantial, its chief feature being feelings, a sense of something, the vibe. Look no further for motivating factors than:

Well, you wanted a place near the sea

• wanting to live in a castle;
• yearning to revisit the cosiness of childhood;
• escaping the misery of suburban mediocrity;
• animating a modern nirvana;
• seeking the self-sufficient eco-wonder;
• living the style statement;
• resurrecting the noble relic;
• grasping at the life-crisis bolthole;
• and the old favourite, demonstrating the conspicuous success story.

All of them are the expression of powerful imaginations at work - a notional construct.

The journey is full of little deceptions, otherwise known as the pressures of reality producing further fictions. Think of such things as:

• the environmentally pure salvation of the old barn that needed a hundred tons of concrete to stop it collapsing - 'oh well, I s'pose we do now have a heat sink';
• the price blowout on the super-insulating glass forcing the amputation of bedroom three - 'you know how the kids will love bunking together';
• the post-sale discovery that the Ministry of Defense has the final word on your tower conversion and that word is No - 'just as well, I think I'm afraid of heights';
• the country idyll assaulted by unreliable suppliers, capricious local authorities, sniping neighbours, incompetent builders and lousy real-world access - 'we love the house, just perfect for us',

Drafty, tricky driveway, yes, but look at that view

... and there are so many more.

It only seems shaky

Built for a thousand years - dammit

As for the result, the manifestation, of all this wishin' and hopin' and plain hard work, that's the biggest fiction of all. Our dreamers stand proud and defiant before their new ideal home, all smiles and gratitude that they seized the opportunity and came through triumphant, fulfilled, enlightened and happy. And in the shadow of that contentment we detect the defensive lie. What they really mean is:

• this was hell and we're completely over it;
• it's too small or cold or large or dark or ...;
• we can't afford it;
• the place doesn't work the way we thought it would;
• will we ever get rid of the builders;
• our friends are so far away now;
• that flat roof will never stop leaking;
• so avant garde, darling, but have you seen that place near Candida's,

... and so it goes.

Caught in the middle of all this alternative reality, indeed interpreting it for his hungry audience, is Sir Kevin. Knowingly or not, he uses many of the classic markers of successful fiction writing - clear heroes and villains, character development, driving plot, challenges and triumphs, resounding conclusion. Program by program, via the process itself and the state of mind of the protagonists, Sir Kevin practices the craft of fiction creation.

Are you listening

But here's the sting in the tail, and you can blame my cynical streak if you like (after all, you may be right to doubt my findings), but the most audacious fiction is that perpetrated on we poor viewers. KMac is playing with us. As occasion arises, he warns of daunting problems of destructive potential and the dire and imminent consequences of the clients' folly. This is what happens when amateur dreamers indulge themselves, he says.

But it is constructive drama-mongering. It is setting up exaggerated conflict and difficulty for the purpose of engaging our emotions. Kevin is creating a fictional thriller. And how do I know this? Because at episode's end his eloquent summation overflows with praise of the vision, commitment and accomplishments of the 'dreamers'. There, he says, what were you worried about? Things turned out just fine. It's a triumph - it's a grand design.

Unless, like many good novelists, he's hiding his true feelings. Unless we poor deluded fools, the viewers, are silly enough to think we know what he thinks. Yes, the fog around our host is lifting ...

... as a writer of fiction Kevin McCloud has no need to wait on the future: he's already there.

Anything's possible in fictional worlds

What Kevin McCloud REALLY Thinks - scoop No. 2 from a Grand Designer's Secret Diary

Sickening Success and Magnificent Miss

There must be times when Kevin McCloud is racked with battling emotions.

I hear him hiss, 'if there's anything called justice in this world, these savages and their execrable house will vanish from the face of the earth ...

... and then, whispering on the wind, comes his despairing plea in response to another project, 'they're mad, they're infants, but please, oh please, let them finish this dream'.

Here's how it comes about in scenario 1:

Take one thrusting, ignorant, self-made legend of commerce (they're always self-made and stunned by their own glory); add one shallow, compliant spouse; season with a pale child or two designer dogs; throw in several shiny German cars, a furnishings train-wreck, a pea-sized imagination and a vat of cash - and, hey presto, there stands a brutal new monument to mediocrity, just begging for a visitation from Bulldozerman.

Sweet revenge - if only!

But no, it won't happen. Sir Kevin weeps inwardly while somehow calling on deep reserves of personal decency to salvage merit from the pointless structure confronting him.

I'm a professional, he'll say. There's got to be something here that isn't stupid or wasteful or gross. They seem to like it. Yes, there, that light works well, that room might get some use, the dogs and the sofa pretty much match, and what about the view! They didn't touch that.

Manfully grasping at straws, Sir Kevin withdraws from wankersville, leaving the noble impression it is a richly deserving creative expression. It must be so for someone, surely.

And on to scenario 2:

Enter the penniless crusaders, the visionaries brimming with ideas and other intangibles. They're determined to have what they want too, but in a hopeless, helpless, low-fat, lovable way.

Home sweet home - as planned

God, if only they could pull it off, they and their five kids and mini zoo, their biscuit barrel of savings (or alternatively, their tenuous treaty with the bank), their earth roof and wind turbine and macrobiotic walls.

Told you so - macrobiotic walls

Things look bad and KMac salts the wound with dire warnings of imminent disaster at the hands of  malevolent forces.

But you can't fool us, Sir Kevin.

Behind your presenter's facade you swell with admiration. Yes, you are anxious for the future of this modest home but we know you'll muck in for them - lime plastering in the fog and tamping mud bricks till the sweat fills your boots. You'll probably throw in a hundred quid if it comes to that.

You desire beyond reason for the project to succeed but, true to form, you must appear the balanced man.

With what result?

Well, this place was tragically a bridge (er, house) too far; this one's on hold - it's a wonderful 'watch-this-space'; but this, well this, I knew it all along - no high street furniture, no glistening limousine, no echoing caverns of space, no grid-sapping panoply of electrical toys, just - how shall I put it - a GRAND DESIGN.

Home sweet home - as finished

What Kevin McCloud REALLY Thinks - scoop No. 1 from a Grand Designer's secret diary

Derelict Irish Church awaiting Idiot Irish Restorer (photo by Lesley)

Close Encounters of an Architectural Kind

All those opportunities to interpret a ruse, down the plughole - damn, why didn't I think of it earlier, that is, before the 17th re-run of the collected box sets of Kevin McCloud's Grand Designs.

I've been sitting dumbly bemused through countless scenes of crimes against architecture imagining Sir Kevin condoned these dismaying acts when, had I perceived the obvious, I might have stepped up (in my characteristic modest way) and enlightened my reader as to KMac's true feelings.

He's been designing episodes grandly since post-and-lintel construction burst upon the unsuspecting world of hunter/gather. He has presented indoors and outdoors, in a place near you or a pinprick on a foreign map, from submerging basement bedrooms to blistering terraces, always affable, agreeably argumentative, brimming with saintly tolerance for all but the most gross blunders and their perpetrators and, in an eloquent closing nutshell, impartially appreciative.

How does he do it?

Well, he's faking it.

In direct proportion to the featured-owner-idiocy-index KMac assumes the temperament of the reasonable man. As their naivety / arrogance / imprudence / crassness increases so does KMac's professional balance and just assessment. But look past his mild qualms as expressed to the camera: underneath he's boiling.

You see, if it appears too good to be true, chances are it is too good to be true. The normal mortal can't stand being so nice and fair for so long. KMac really wants to tell them what wastes of space they are, whilst texting for the urgent on-site presence of the nearest demolition contractor.

For instance, take these twits (the bloke really) hell bent on converting an innocent ruined church in the far reaches of Ireland.

The Great Architect - in jocular mood (rare, early photo)

What a super home it will make, he intones, with all the pomposity of the born-again architect - you know the sort, doggedly defiant in the face of his portfolio of past excrescences now regrettably gracing the built environment. Trouble is, he was an architect.

God help the little church.

And so it began, the usual building saga. Sir Kevin was very positive, so positive it just had to mask his growing loathing. I began to feel sorry for the twit's wife, trivialised and marginalised by her Great Inspiration-struck Master.

'It seems too small' she pleaded. 'Nonsense' he condescended, 'look at that height, three storeys of it'. What was she supposed to do? Cook and serve meals vertically?

Cut and diced, the poor structure blossomed into a pastiche of design mediocrity.

I just know Sir Kevin itched to scream:

• this is a nasty warren of rooms for underdeveloped pygmies;
• with bathrooms thoughtfully two floors distant from bedrooms;
• linked by bland slabs of white plaster of silo-like appeal;
• featuring a tower retreat making a subdivided phone box look spacious;
• cleverly permitting a woman to up-skill to gymnast-chef;
• courageously unheedful of imminent hospitalising incidents guaranteed in traversing the precipitous two level sitting room (itself a triumph of miniaturisation); 
• embellished with rails and balusters fresh from a failed Woodwork 1 class project;
• the kitchen a forest of timber supports further encouraging the cook-if-you-dare principle;
• and about as airy and welcoming as a morgue.

Yes, I PLANNED this.

But did he give his real feelings away? Not one bit. He's too polite for that. He's too generous to mention  the assault on his own proven design sensibilities. Anyway, how many hopefuls would entrust their dreams to a presenter who told the truth?

He's trapped, poor man.

Mercifully, there are two confidants to whom KM can lay his soul bare - his good wife, who is wisely keeping schtum, and your tireless correspondent, who labours in the service of his reader.

This Christmas I fully expect to receive a complimentary copy of Lord McCloud's 33rd series of Grand Designs.