Farmers my arse.
£600k glass barn just so we can “feel part of the farm”.

Cant help but think its a bit out of place on a Wiltshire farm…!!!

I wouldn’t say so

The stairs were/are unbelievable. *comic book guy* best Grand Design ever…..

Stairs were great. Not keen on the rest of the house-looks like every other house on grand designs with one side of the house in glass, the balcony upper floor, tiny bedrooms with blackout shutters in the window/wall things…

Looked like a mini leisure centre. All it needed to finish it off was a few Hoodies fagging it outside.

I have to admit I thought it was much nicer than I’d expected it to turn out – mainly due to how they’d finished it, and in 10yrs time it’ll look fantastic. If she was an artist, that’ll be where the mumbo-jumbo came from, but at least it’ll age well, unlike some of the other crap they seem to have on there these days…
I R jealous!

and in 10yrs time it’ll look fantastic.

Dya think? I suspect it’ll look like a weathered nature reserve visitors centre, as opposed to a spanky new nature reserve visitors centre. It’s certainly no Fallingwaters.

I find it frustrating that people would waste so much time, effort and money producing something with no thought as to whether or not it’ll be architecturally relevant in 50 years time. It won’t, and if that’s the legacy they’re going to leave behind, I for one wish they wouldn’t bother.

Yes, the staircase was lovely, but hardly original. And 40 grand??? The rest of it was self indulgent pap by a woman who should stick to daubing paint on canvas and a bloke who should grow some balls and stop letting his wife spunk every penny he earns on a faddy eyesore like that.

By the end I was waiting for Gordon Brittas to meet Kevin when he went back in Feb to see the final product.

I, too, thought it looked like some kind of community centre or something. It was also a very uninspired shape (not the roof, but simply the long thin building with box rooms above an open plan downstairs).

Also – why the hell did they put the one amazing feature (the staircase) behind a wall at the front of the building – surely that should have been behind glass so it was visable from outside. The one organic shape in the entire building was obscured by a flat wall.

And there were too many materials used (even though they said they kept them to a minimum). The different woods may blend in time but it seems to me they panicked and started painting over tohide the ‘huge sauna’ (I liked that Kevin).

I could have done better (design-wise) on Sketch-Up.

Ohh, and the gates (which looked great on paper) looked utter rubbish.

The least inspiring design of the series by some margin for me.

But I did like the kitchen.

I did wonder what the point of the gates were. I can only assume they were there to get in the way. they would stop anything getting in / through, so why bother.

Perhaps it was just another ‘arty’ thing

Oh, and it was nice to see some older people who weren’t making babies, sacking architects, running out of money and flouting planning regs for a change

Rabley Barn Studio (the woman’s gellery) is actually about 5 miles away from us. Must take a drive past it as I’ve never seen one of the Grand Designs in the flesh before.

Looked a bit souless and industrial on the TV. Will be interesting to see it in situ.

Yeah – with the gates… I was imagining some huge focal point swinging gates at the head of a drive, not some poncy little side gate. Perhaps they had those too but didn’t show them?

I wouldn’t mind the staircase designer’s job though – £40k for four month’s work with minimal material costs, I bet the materials only amounted to 10% of the price. And working from a cheapo unit. Good margins for him.

I did like how they dealt with things using farm machinery though – a tractor and a fork-lift for the staircase. Quality.

I find it frustrating that people would waste so much time, effort and money producing something with no thought as to whether or not it’ll be architecturally relevant in 50 years time. It won’t, and if that’s the legacy they’re going to leave behind, I for one wish they wouldn’t bother.

Relevant in 50 years? The architect isn’t using his crystal ball. The neo-classical architects of the Georgian terraces of bath must have been rubbish as 50 years after they had been built they were decidedly out of fashion in Victorian England.

When she dragged those ancient harrows in, I thought “hope they’ve been treated for woodworm!”

I do tend to agree with that point myself – it just looks like every other modern build. It has no architectural significance at all, which is very unlike either of the last two (the tiled arch and the tyre building) which were visionary in their own personal way and make a point. That building just looks like a Swimming Pool.

And Bath’s Georgian terraces are hardly architectural high points – they are just buildings of their age (although they do look nice now). Perhaps if you had given examples of buildings of real architectural significance it would have leant more gravitas to your argument. Perhaps example Crystal Palace or the Glasgow School of Art or something…

The bath georgian terraces not architectural highpoints – lolz.

ridethelakes – Member
Looked like a mini leisure centre. All it needed to finish it off was a few Hoodies fagging it outside.

Hammer hits nail perfectly on the head.

great way to get every nosey parker in the world to come to your gallery though….
free advert, all they need is an over priced farm shop and they’ll be even more minted in no time

The bath georgian terraces not architectural highpoints – lolz.

You are not getting my point (or I didn’t make it very well possibly) – individually the buildings are not particularly architeturally significant. As a set, a collection of buildings designed around a central point they become significant.

Whereas Crystal Palace or the Glasgow School of Art are individual buildings that mean something. And Farmer Giles’ house doesn’t mean anything. It is just a relatively poorly designed house, designed by an architect clearly more used to designing council buildings.

I quite liked it. Functional and not too mad.

I wouldn’t be happy sleeping in the one with the arched roof and much better than the hairy hippie’s mud hut, Mr Naughty’s fake watermill and the Banker’s tower/prefab hybrid. It did look a bit like a provincial Swedish airport though.

I can’t imagine that the gates would stop 200 cows if they decided that they wanted to go walk about.

All the talk of the smooth curve of the barn being symapthetic to the land was utter tosh, it was a big box with a curved roof. It wasn’t in any way related to the land and could have been pick up and plopped down anywhere and still looked as relevant. I liked the materiality but the two clients were just so full of crap.
Ditto the stair behind the only bit of solid wall on that facade.
And the cost of it all was ridiculous. Good for them in sourcing local work but it looked about double of what it could have cost. The wood was shipped from Scandinavia anyway, they could have probably got the beams produced there as well for cheaper [speculation] and shipped.

Just a thought… Would it have been cheaper if they had moved in to the barn and put up an industrial unit for the gallery?

Not that many individual dwellings are architecturally significant on their own though – Frank Lloyd Wrights and Corbusier’s some of Arts and Crafts stuff (Mackintosh – your chap from Glasgow School of Art). It’s not a great example to compare them to wacking great public buildings that cost (or would today) many millions of pounds.

It’s just a house in the same way that the Georgian terraces are just “houses” whether it is architecturally significant or not in 50 years is up to posterity, it may be lauded as a perfect example of early 21st century design, who knows, probably won’t though. My original point is that an architect can’t design anything to be architecturally significant in 50 years, they just have to design something for the now. When Frank Lloyd Wright did his prairie houses he wasn’t designing them to be “architecturally significant” for the future.

Just a thought… Would it have been cheaper if they had moved in to the barn and put up an industrial unit for the gallery?

Or the building will become the gallery then they will have a good reason to build another house, then they convert the former back to a dwelling and sell it for a huge profit.

They spent £660k on the build I think? That’s not a lot of house for the money given that the land was already owned which is mostly a significant chunk of a houses’s value.

Bimbler – you make some good points about how a building (or music or art or fashion of any kind) can be perceived in the present or in the future. They are all very good points.

But unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be any valid reason to believe that that hut will become any kind of classic, be it in 50 year or 500 as it is simply boring and unimaginative. They even admit so much themselves – it isn’t meant to be particularly striking, it is just a working farmhouse.

Or turn the barn in to a house for whoever takes over the farm when they retire and they can live out their days in the new one.

Mudshark – exactly – I was about to point that out – the hippies’ mud and tyre hut cost them £140k I believe (inc. the land cost) which represents much better value for money.

I wouldn’t want to live in it though – it looked horrible. But at least it had a personal mark and reflected the poeple and their environment.

I think that last night’s house could have been executed so much better – the concept of using the Dutch Barn curved roof, reflecting the rolling countryside was great. The gates reflecting the sheafs of corn was wonderful.

But it was all very disappointing in its execution IMO.

Architecturally significant? Who knows what that will be in 50 years.
There is myriad more building products available these days and with technology moving so fast that it has been near impossible to establish an architectural language for residential scale housing in the late 20th and early 21st century. Unfortunately the most significant language is that of the mass builders of souless estates.

I think we are all agreeing that the house wasn’t exceptional in architectural standards but it might be very comfortable to live in.
I also think its the cost that most of us are dissapointed with.
So. Question: would the house have been better recieved if it was half the cost or less.

Also, towards the end there was more talk of teenagers. Did they have kids that I assumed didn’t want to appear on TV?

They had 3 kids I think. Presumably one of them will buy/inherit the business and will get the old barn as their house whilst mum and dad live in the new one.

Yeah – I think they had three teenage boys from what they said.

They had better hope those automatic blinds don’t accidentally open whilst they are single-handedly enjoying the latest Pussycat Dolls video…

Why electric blinds? manual ones are a fraction of the cost and quicker!!!

would the house have been better recieved if it was half the cost or less

Well there’s a point at which people would be impressed as to what was achieved with the money. I suppose realistically the house isn’t going to be for sale on its own at any point as it’s the farm house so finding a market value ain’t easy but they wanted an ‘arty’ farm house rather than a functional one and so paid a premium for the build. Their choice but I’d have built something more functional and either built something larger or done something else with it. But then I wouldn’t be on the programme….

I loved it when she said “engaging with the space”

– on the surface this sounds an interesting idea but when you dig a little deeper you realise that it is simply meaningless nonsense uttered by someone quite a bit thicker than you originally thought.

dig a little deeper you realise that it is simply meaningless nonsense

I’m sure I read that as a definition of art somewhere….

Farmers my arse.

Yeah not the income of any farmers you hear about these days. Would be interested to see how it looks once the roof has tarnished and mellowed in appearance. I’d have preferred one of them there living roofs. Nice gaff, liking the practicality – especially the boot (/bike) room

Relevant in 50 years? The architect isn’t using his crystal ball.

That’s the point, it’s bland and insignificant now so it’s unlikely to be feted as a striking example of early 21st century architecture in the future.
It’ll have as much architectural significance as an Airey house. And it’ll look just as tatty in spite of the ridiculous sums of money involved.

Why electric blinds? manual ones are a fraction of the cost and quicker!!!

Pimp value..

same could be said for bike parts.