let there be LIGHT!
With Channel 4’s Grand Designs making a welcome comeback to our screens this January, Angela Sara West chats with Kevin McCloud MBE about the inspiring new TV series, his own lighting designs for Harrods and Edinburgh Castle, top tips for a smooth build, and how best to bring daylight into the home.
As an authority on architecture and design, Kevin McCloud is a man on a mission to dig down to the bare bones of a place and its people. Inspiring millions to build brand-new outstanding homes, his prolific travels, words of wisdom and engaging signature style have been captured on camera at ancient sites and modern self-builds both in Britain and far- flung corners of the globe.
Best known for fronting Channel 4’s BAFTA award-winning series Grand Designs, which sees the much-loved presenter follow ambitious families on their large-scale design and build journeys in pursuit of their ideal home, Kevin also presents Grand Designs: House of the Year, which follows the prestigious RIBA House of the Year competition, the ‘Oscars’ of the industry. The popular presenter is also an author, penning books and articles on construction, architecture, design, decoration, lighting and colour, alongside his role as editor-at-large of Grand Designs Magazine.
The Grand Designs series sees Kevin criss-crossing the country, popping up in his hard hat at building sites UK-wide as he follows the fortunes of ‘Grand Designers’ attempting to create their dream homes. “We travel all over! I spend a lot
of time flinging around the country like a lunatic,” Kevin tells me. “For me, it’s memorable people that make places stand out. I love that the programme gives me the opportunity to go to amazing places, plus the privilege of spending the day looking at a fantastic view, meeting people on interesting journeys, all with something to say and share…”
Although Kevin tries hard to reduce his travelling time, he has made a few other series abroad, including Kevin McCloud’s Grand Tour of Europe and Escape to the Wild. “The latter was about people building in ridiculous places in the world, be it the Arctic Circle or the South Seas of the Pacific. Occasionally, for Grand Designs even, we’ll get a project on the west coast of Ireland or northern France, somewhere that we can get to relatively easily and film and we will take on those projects, but it’s all about appropriateness, isn’t it, because when you’re making television, it seems so glamorous, you know, the locations, the beauty… but to get those beautiful shots, the cameraman has had to get up at 4am or is still filming at 10 o’clock at night. It’s great fun though!”
Placing people at the centre of the stories, viewers live vicariously through the triumphs and tribulations of Grand Designs’ self-builders. Kevin’s passion for architecture, history and culture shines through, as does his great sense of humour. Wooing audiences with his engaging presenting style, the philosophical presenter’s cool asides to the camera and pearls of wisdom are legendary.
What does Kevin love most about making the UK’s pre-eminent TV programme on modern architecture and design? “The people,” he says. “The people I work with, my colleagues, who are all friends and I have worked with for 20-25 years, whom I miss when I don’t see them… The contributors and the architecture get involved as a part of that.”
Seeing the light… Italian inspiration
So, where did his amazing career begin? He tells me his experience of living on an organic farm in Tuscany as an 18- year old was pivotal, opening his eyes to the world. “For me, that time was seminal,” Kevin reveals. “I had a place to study, worked on a farm, fell in love… everything happened in one year, it was great! I came from a small Bedfordshire village, with a very limited view of the world, and Italy showed me
a world which was bigger and more beautiful and that, personally, I might be capable of a bit more.”
Lighting the stage for Stephen Fry & Hugh Laurie
He went on to study opera at Florence’s Conservatory
of Music in his 20s, before going down the design and architecture route, rather than pursue a singing career. Studying the history of art and architecture at Cambridge University, Kevin joined the famous Footlights Revue with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, where he “tinkered” with lighting backstage. After graduating, he worked in theatre before setting up a successful lighting design practice.
Lighting up Harrods & Edinburgh Castle
Before finding small-screen fame, Kevin’s own design studio saw him work on some very grand designs himself, including the ceiling of Harrods’ food halls, and lighting in the Savoy and Dorchester hotels and in Ely Cathedral and Edinburgh Castle.
Having carved out a career as a product and lighting designer, he has produced ranges of lighting, furniture and tableware for high street retailers and manufacturers, along with designing for a number of high-profile building and architectural firms. “I’ve done different
things, and I think the mixture, being a jack of all trades, has made me an ideal candidate for television!”
Clearly cut out for the role, in 1999 he fronted the very first Grand Designs. Over two decades on, the factual series is still going strong, having grown into a global phenomenon. How does it feel to have clocked up more than 20 years fronting the successful series, and to still be on our screens today? “Scary! I celebrated a big birthday in 2019 (my 60th) and Grand Designs did too (its 20th), and who’d have thought? I thought I’d be doing something else with my life and I’m very blessed that it’s worked out for me.”
Top projects
The top self-build projects that he’s visited for Grand Designs? “I keep getting asked this and I tried to produce a shortlist of five or 10 and I couldn’t, so in the end I produced 20, in no particular order, and we celebrated them all at
the last Grand Designs Live. They’re memorable, not just because they’re great buildings, but because they were great projects to film, because I may have made them with a director I love very much and have worked with for decades, or a cameraman with whom I’m really good friends, for example, or because the people were just fantastic or because the pub at lunch was great… that’s always an important aspect!”
Small or gigantic grand designs? “Small grand designs… that’s what I like. The grand designs that are big on vision, but not necessarily big on square meterage.” He reveals there are more funny behind-the-scenes stories than you can shake a survey at. “Oh, dozens! Mostly not broadcastable, of course! At a previous Grand Designs Live we had a blooper room which I had nothing to do with – it was produced by my colleagues and was all at my expense!”
New Grand Designs
The new series of Grand Designs started this January. “As always, it follows the stories, visions and obstacles of some incredible people,” says Kevin. “The show celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2019, and I remain amazed by the awe-inspiring properties these individuals create and just how personal the finished result is
to them. I get to know all our contributors well during the process – as do the viewers – and the intricate details that may initially seem random or pointless to us, suddenly make sense as the building evolves to reflect their personalities. The sense of achievement and pride they experience when the home is finished, particularly when so much personal commitment has gone into it, is, as ever, a marvel to witness…”
“I think one of the main reasons people enjoy watching the show is that they become invested in our self-builders’ lives and fortunes.” And he says it’s no different this series, with sites beset by all the usual obstacles, plus the added difficulties brought about by Covid. “The projects include a barn rebuilt by a young couple defying illness, and an ex-soldier adding a subterranean extension to a listed lodge… within a cemetery! We also have a risk-taking, sky-diving couple restoring a 17th- century Cornish mill, and a builder who crafts a Dutch-influenced tile-skinned house in south Lincolnshire.” And that’s not all… “Rather excitingly, we have a couple near Bletchley defying logic to build one of the UK’s first self-heating houses.”
The series kicked off with a bang of a build, with only the bravest members of the team at Simon Gill Architects taking on an unusual dilapidated
lodge restoration with extension in
an extremely unconventional setting. Sitting directly next to a graveyard, we watched transfixed as the neo-gothic cemetery warden’s lodge in south-west London was transformed into a super- luxury 6-bed home with a subterranean space with a swimming pool, plus an ultra-modern extension, resulting in a sensational multi-million-pound build.
At home with Kevin McCloud
Riveting stuff! So, is Kevin’s own
home a ‘grand design’? “No, it’s small, simple and modest. I don’t talk about
it because, I think, if there’s a myth,
it would destroy the myth… and my credibility!” he says. “Like all of us,
I have a piece of furniture which I’ve inherited and don’t particularly like, and something I bought from Habitat 20-30 years ago… All of our lives are full of objects which make up our autobiographies, reflecting who we are, where we’ve been, what we love and the people around us… and my home’s exactly like that. Your home is a very private place. I am really admiring of those people who put their homes on television and allow us into their lives to film their projects, because I would never do it!”
WITH THE BENEFITS OF NATURAL LIGHT BECOMING A FOCUS DURING LOCKDOWNS, KEVIN SHARES HIS EXCLUSIVE ADVICE ON WAYS TO BRING LIGHT INTO A BUILDING:
- It sounds obvious and a bit daft, but clean your windows! The more sparkling they are, the greater the light transmissivity. Dirty windows can
block and reflect a significant percentage of daylight hitting them. Even a clean, double-glazed window only transmits 80% of the light hitting it. - Use mirrors, or framed and glazed pictures, to reflect light around a room and bounce the beams. Never use concave, curved mirrors, such as shaving or make-up mirrors, which will focus beams of light into a hotspot. A friend of mine’s house burned down because sunshine accidentally caught her tabletop make-up mirror…
- Don’t become obsessive about light level, but light manipulation. I’ve used stick-on translucent film on windows to provide privacy and soften light in a south-facing dressing room. A translucent roller blind will do the same (space it away from the glass to soften the light further). A roller blind plus a sheer or net curtain spaced a few inches from it will surprise you. The combined effect reduces the quantity of light in a room, of course, but it will also bring an astonishing ethereal quality. A white, or especially a pale grey room will seem to shimmer in this kind of light.
• Supplement natural daylight with artificial lighting. Retailers such as National Lighting sell LED panels and strips that can be flush fitted to ceilings, or hidden on tall cupboards, to match daylight colour temperatures. Preferably, get hold of versions with adjustable colour temperatures – from 2,000* Kelvin (the colour of a
warm white incandescent light bulb) to around 5,600* Kelvin (the bluish colour of daylight on a cloudy day, in other words ‘British Isles light’).
• If you can, install a rooflight over a dark space like a stairwell. Or introduce one for a view to infinity; the birds, the clouds, the sky and the stars… A skylight can introduce up to twice the daylight into a room than an equivalent-sized vertical window. This is because the skylight will be facing the sky, not obstructions like other buildings, and because the light hitting it will often be near-perpendicular to the glass, reducing losses of light from surface reflectance and the internal refraction within the glass.
• And finally, accept that with the passing of the years, you need more light to function as your retina deteriorates. Aged 50, you’ll need roughly twice as much light for tasks as when you were 20. By 70, your retinal function will have dropped to just 12% of what it was in your prime.
KEVIN’S TOP TIPS FOR A STRESS-FREE BUILD:
- Plan, plan, plan… and don’t change your mind. Because if you fail to prepare, you then prepare to fail.
- Employ people who are good and see the world the way you do, whether that’s your architect or builder.
- Make it smaller than you imagine, and don’t overreach, because it will cost more and be badly done as a result. It’s better to have more money than you actually need for the project. It’s an obvious piece of advice, but nobody ever listens to it… no-one ever in the history of mankind, because we’re a species of over- reachers, that’s what we do for a living!
USEFUL LINKS FROM KEVIN:
www.narm.org.uk/new/wp-content/ uploads/2019/02/NTD12-Daylight- in-domestic-properties.pdf
www.velux.com/what-we-do/ research-and-knowledge/deic- basic-book/daylight/daylight-with- roof-windows-flat-roof-windows- and-modular-skylights
© Angela Sara West 2021 Instagram: @angela_sara_west
Watch the new series of Grand Designs on All 4’s catch-up on-demand channel at www.channel4.com