The blueprint for building your dream home

Synopsis
TV's architecture and design guru Kevin McCloud shares his passion and expertise in this brilliant guide to designing and building your own home, illustrated with the most memorable houses from the award-winning Channel 4 series.

The book goes way beyond the confines of the usual TV tie-in. Over the 11 years that Grand Designs has been on our screens, Kevin has had plenty of opportunity to formulate his own strong views on what makes truly brilliant architecture. For the first time he can share those views fully, showing that ‘houses too can be architecture’ and giving any aspiring self-builder the maximum number of tools to ensure that their vision becomes reality, with the minimum amount of heartache along the way.

Through three main sections – ‘Thinking’, ‘Dreaming’ and ‘Doing’ – he guides you through each stage of the self–build process, from working out what you really want, to finding a plot, obtaining planning permission, commissioning and briefing architects and builders, and implementing the build itself. Structured around fundamental locations – urban, suburban and rural – Kevin presents his own compendium of houses from across the UK which he finds exciting and exemplary. Some of the most successful projects from the TV series are featured, including Monty Ravenscroft’s innovative house in Peckham with its retractable roof, a reinvented violin factory in Waterloo, a converted barn in Ross–on–Wye, a spectacular loch-side house on the Clyde estuary and a glass pavilion on a beach near Exeter. As Kevin says, ‘ Green is no longer a weird colour to be’ and running throughout the book is the theme of sustainable building and how to achieve it – not as some minority issue only of interest to those who knit their own sofas but as something which is increasingly central to how we will design, build and live in our homes.

Passionate and opinionated, this book is always highly readable and engaging. For anyone who cares about design and for everyone who has ever thought about building their own home it is essential and truly inspiring reading.

Buy Grand Designs Handbook: The Blueprint for Building Your Dream Home from Amazon.co.uk

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Hot Brands Verdict
If you have ever been in awe of the people who are featured in the TV series Grand Designs, this inspiring book by Kevin McCloud will encourage you to dream your own dreams. It’s a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know about building your own dream home.

Kevin’s passion sings out loud through this book, we loved his down to earth approach, his helpful checklists, including one at the very beginning in his introduction, a list of the Top 10 Do’s and Don’ts about which he says
‘The list that even if you close the book right now and give to the Dorothy House charity shop, you should cut out and keep’ but we don’t advocate giving this book away, even if your own Grand Design is a few years away, read it, absorb it and believe it.

Also included are examples of successful ‘Grand Designs’ beautifully illustrated, but what we also loved was that this really is a handbook, built around, Thinking, Dreaming and Doing; expect your copy to become a working document, this book is an essential reference guide, one which is human and funny, practical and down-to-earth, we loved it ! Highly Recommended.