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