Grand Designs (1999–…): Season 19, Episode 2 - Padstow, Cornwall, 2018 - full transcript

We can all of us, can't we,
admire great works of art?

Not that we're ever going to
own them.

We can, of course, make copies.
Mmm?

As Picasso said - good artists
copy, great artists steal.

Although he stole that quote
from TS Eliot.

It all depends, in the end,
how good the copy is -

how well it turns out.

Then again, I quite like that.

I think the hat's a great addition.

This programme contains
strong language.

18 months ago, Harry and Briony
Anscombe



along with their three children,
Alice, Eleny and Rocky,

made a radical change to their
lives.

We'd been in London, and knew we
wouldn't really want to bring
up a family there,

or be able to afford to, so
we just thought, why not?

Whilst they're young, let's move
down, and create a life down here.

They decided on North Cornwall,

a place of rugged cliffs and
powerful seas.

Surfing is obviously a big
part of it, you know,

being by the north coast of
Cornwall, where the waves are so
good.

Being able to bring the kids
up by the sea,

it's just a really exciting
opportunity.

Harry, a former TV journalist,
runs a small production company in

London, but wants to set up a
second office in Cornwall,

recreating a live-work lifestyle
similar to one he enjoyed in
America.



What we loved about living in
California was that

combination of being outdoors,

but also having a sort of solid
creative industry there.

We work in video production and
product design, and there's a lot of

creative people down here who work
in those sorts of industries now.

It's something we've dreamt of doing

and we're going to do now,
hopefully.

It seems a radical move, but the new
house they've designed as

their base for all this is even more
adventurous, an eight-acre former

dairy farm, which they've bought for
£490,000.

They're currently crammed into
a tiny cottage

which came with the plot, but it's
front of this that they intend

to build an America-inspired home,
the likes of which Cornwall has
never seen.

So this is the site. Yes.

It's a good site. You think?

Great location.

So what is it you're going to build?

Well, what we're building is a
family surf house,

with a practical end, somewhere
with all the rooms in the right

places, and somewhere that we can
bring up a family.

Yeah. But then,
it also has this kind of sexy end,

which is a floating steel-framed
glass box.

We had this visual in our mind,
which is the house that was

in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, this
house in Illinois...

In the film? In the film, yeah,
and we saw that film, and thought,
that's the house.

That's the atmosphere we want to
create.

What Harry is referring to is a
striking steel-framed

pavilion immortalised in the cult
'80s film Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

The pavilion, designed by David
Haid, is part of a larger house,

designed in the same powerful
language by his mentor,

James Speyer, in 1953.

But Speyer's iconic example of
American Modernism was

intended to sit in a forest
in Illinois,

not on an exposed valley near
the Cornish coast.

Have you visited it?
No, but we've seen lots of photos,

and it's become a bit of an
obsession -

to honour it, you know,
and try and create that same

atmosphere they had in
that house here.

And was that your brief to the
architect? Like,

"Just give me that house",
cos that is a bit of a...

I'm sorry, if somebody said that
to me, I'd kind of...

my shoulders would sag and I'd moan

at the idea of simply having to
copy another house.

It's not a direct copy, is it?

It came from the original designs.

Harry and Briony commissioned the
technical drawings for this

audacious Speyer-inspired dwelling,

the foundations of which have
already been started.

The centrepiece will be a vast
single 220-square-metre

open-plan living space, made from
40 chunky Speyer-like steel beams.

The Speyer-inspired glass walls
will also be big - four metres tall,

though they'll be separated by areas
of cladding to save some money.

The impression ought to be of a
structure floating out over the
valley.

Adjoining, there'll be a more
pragmatic bedroom wing,

set back into the hillside,
also made from steel,

but altogether more modest and
hidden behind timber cladding.

The house will be
accessed by a walkway,

leading down from the
hillside above.

Immediately inside, your eye will be
led by an overhead strip of glass,

13 metres long, towards the
heart of the home,

an enormous open-plan kitchen,
dining and living room space that

will enjoy some commanding views
of the valley below.

Also here, there's a playroom-cum-TV
room, an office, utility room,

shower room, and some all-important
storage for surfboards and

wet suits.

The bedroom wing starts with a
20-metre-long hallway,

off which will be an en-suite guest
room,

bedrooms for each of the three
children,

and for Harry and Briony, their own
master suite at the end.

What makes this house different from
the Speyer original is its scale -

bigger by a third, it's Speyer on
steroids.

So to pull off something like this,

you'd expect a budget in excess of
a million pounds, wouldn't you?

How much is the house going to cost?

The budget at the moment is between
375 and 400.

OK.
Does that include the contingency?

Yes. Yes. So it's 400 tops, max.
Yes.

And it's being financed through...?
Savings.

We have a 90% mortgage on the land,
which has left us with some

cash to spend on the house.

And as soon as we get into
the house,

we can rent the cottage out.

You and your merry band are going to
be here for how long, do you reckon?

We want to be in by Christmas.
This year? Yes. Oooh! Yeah. OK.
Yeah.

That's the plan,
because at soon as we can be in,

we can rent out the little
cottage as a holiday let, and then

keep the income coming for
finishing it, so...

So who's going to project manage?

I am. Yeah. Somehow!

Really? Yeah.

Young family, house, land, equals a
lot of hard work.

Yes. But you're young.

Yeah. And... Enthusiastic and
determined.

We're ready, yeah. Ready.

Harry and Briony are nothing
if not ambitious.

So I've been doing a bit of thinking
about the cost of building.

Given that a high-spec self-build
comes in generally around about

say £3,000 a square metre -

so if you were to build the Speyer
house today,

to modern building regs,
it would come in around £800,000.

The thing is, Harry and Briony's
house is a third bigger than that.

And they don't have anything like
£800,000,

let alone the £1 million-plus it
would probably cost to do.

They've got 400,000.

So to my mind, to try and build to
that quality for that amount

of money represents the ambitions of
a delusional optimist.

Four weeks later, the concrete
foundations have been poured,

and work starts on the block work
that will support the steel frame.

Harry's hired two hugely experienced
local subbies for the duration

of the build - Ken
known as the bossman...

That was a bit of luck, wasn't it?
Down for a cut one.

..and Mark...

Half block all right?
No, a full one.

Between them,
they've built over 40 houses,

although nothing quite like
this before.

Yeah, I'm a little bit in love with
Ken and Mark at the moment.

I want to sort of hug them and look
after them and be with them, you
know!

LAUGHTER

Cos they are...

They are the key to a happy life,

which is getting this house built
and getting a family out of

the little one-roomed living space
and into a proper family house.

Employing two experienced guys like
Ken and Mark might well be

the best move Harry has made here.

Well, I would say he's the boss.

Yeah, he's the boss... Yeah, yeah.
..but Ken, a friend,

cos you can have a laugh with him.
Yeah, but you guys,

you've been around in the building
trade for how long? 50 years.

50 years, so you've got something
of an edge on him, then.

Yes. A little bit of knowledge.

Sometimes, I can put him straight,
sometimes.

Ken just puts his foot down.
But he's all right.

If we can find out a cheaper way of
doing it for him, obviously,

we talk it over with Harry, and...
Yeah. We go down that road,
you know.

But the knock-on of having just two
albeit great builders is that

there's just two of them.

Three months into the
tight eight-month schedule,

all Harry has is the block work
base for the steel frame.

I thought we'd be in by Christmas.

The plan is to be in by Christmas.

I'd love to be in by Christmas, but
I don't know if that's going to
happen or not now.

To my mind, an ambitious and bold
lump of architecture like

this is either going to need more
money and manpower, or more time.

So it's a relief to see that in
midsummer,

Ken and Mark are joined by a
steelwork team setting up the first

20 lengths. Remarkably, there's a
total of 75 in this building.

Not the structural steels for the
Speyer-inspired living space,

though, but the more run-of-the-mill
floor beams for the bedroom end.

But bossman Ken has spotted a
problem.

What's this beam here actually
doing here, then?

One of the steel beams that should
sit on top of the blockwork

walls isn't long enough.

Yeah, I thought, "Oh, we'll just get
in today, and put these nice ground

"steels in and have some lunch", but
it's not quite as simple as that.

This is a sign of things to come,
I think.

That's five mil out,
with it, so yeah.

That is actually where it ends,

and then it fastens onto this
upright.

They'll have to wait several
weeks for a new beam to be made

and galvanised, a delay they can ill
afford.

They're already four months into
a tight eight-month schedule.

This avoidable error is an early
warning that Harry's

inexperience as a project manager
can threaten progress.

I'm responsible for the site
measurements, and what gets

sent to the engineers,
and there was a discrepancy.

Maybe it if it was a main
contractor,

he would have made absolutely sure
that that didn't happen,

but it did, and that was probably my
fault.

Yeah.

Structurally, it'll lose its
integrity,

so it'll have to go up again, so...

Harry's humility is touching,
but humility isn't going to

deliver a million-pound house
for peanuts.

Human ambition is a wonderful thing,
cos it drives people to produce

great projects like this but it
also can undermine them.

On the whole, people only opt to
build the projects they can afford.

North Cornwall has welcomed
Harry and Briony,

although their 400 grand steel
surf house

is yet to rise out of the ground.

They're now five months into
an eight-month programme

and progress is slow, and subject
to Harry's haphazard plans

to bring an iconic idea in
on a budget price.

You all right? Yeah.

We have a quote for it all
to be steel, all exposed,

and it was coming in
at about ?80,000-?90,000.

So we've had to go back to the
drawing board and find another way

to create that look of the
sort of industrial, exposed steel.

And what is the solution, then?
How do you do that?

Putting the structural steel in,

which is relatively small,

to hold up the cantilevered box,

but then attaching long beams
of wood to the front of it

and then wrapping that in aluminium.

That's more affordable. That...

..seems also to subvert the
whole idea of the architecture

on which it's based.

But we can't afford ?90,000. Yeah.

Our new idea is still structural,
and I've seen pictures,

I think it could work.

Great.

I can't help feeling Harry's
new idea undermines the very

architecture that inspired him.

It was James Speyer's teacher
Mies van der Rohe who pioneered

floating steel-and-glass boxes
that Harry so loves.

His buildings were revolutionary

because they revealed and
celebrated materials like steel,

instead of hiding them behind skins

of dummy materials like
brick or stone.

A lesson that maybe Harry ought to
heed.

DRILL WHIRS

With such uncertainty surrounding
the architectural heart of this
home,

all energy's going into erecting
the more humdrum section,

the bedroom end.

We wanted to build the whole house
all together,

but what's becoming apparent
is that the practical end

is almost a totally
separate house now.

We've got to claw some time back.

There's an underlying elephant
in the room saying,

"Get the bloody thing finished,"

cos we need somewhere to live,
you know.

At this rate, I wonder
if Harry and Briony

will ever do justice
to their vision.

It does seem to me that
on this project, you...

..you kind of set yourself
a number of challenges.

Mm. Maybe it's a little bit of being
told you can't do something, and...

Or it being frowned upon
for you to try,

and then being able
to prove otherwise.

That's a challenge.

Until you realise
you've taken on too much

and it just gets
stressful and affects...

..affects all of it, really.

Briony, is this too much,
this project?

I want to say yes, but then, I
really want the house, so...

THEY LAUGH

But, yes, I think it is.

I think it is too much.

Maybe ego got the better of us.

Or it maybe got the better of me,
or... I don't know.

I wish we hadn't sort of set
this goal that we have to achieve,

in terms of emulating that house.

I suppose I didn't really know
how purist Harry was going to be

about sticking to that,
that sort of...

..Speyer house.

Maybe he went into it slightly...

..naively.

SEAGULLS CAW

Six months in, this project's
running badly behind.

Harry's now under pressure so
he's brought in extra manpower

to complement the veteran Ken,
the boss man and Mark.

So it's been Ken, Mark and I for six
months, doing all the groundworks.

Now...

HAMMER BANGS

Ta-da! People.

We've got Oli, carpenter,

Dave, carpenter,

and then Jonah on the roof
with Mark.

So we've gone from a
team of three to six, seven,

and that's meant we've managed
to get this up really quickly

in the dry weather.

Oli runs his own building company
and said, "Do you want a hand?"

He does hours with us on site,

but then he also is helping me
with the budget

and to project manage the thing.

He's not free, mind. But...

He's a mate, but he's not free!

Building fundamentally simple,

you must be careful
not to overcomplicate it.

It's...it's glorified cave building,

that's really all we're doing.

You can get a bit tied up in fancy
designs with twirls and twiddles

and all that sort of stuff,
and actually, it's a square box.

So hopefully I can help him
with that side of life.

By October, the bedroom
end has sprung up,

and there's more good news.

After agonising over the design
of the big living space,

Harry's decided not to botch
the steel frame

but honour James Speyer's
design after all.

Having spoken to Kevin
and having slept on it...

We thought, well, that's kind of
faking it. It's not really honest.

It's not really in keeping with
what we're trying to do. So...

We are now using steel,
exposed steel.

And it's coming in on budget,
at ?70,000,

thanks to Harry's
structural engineer,

who's redesigned the steel frame
with cheaper, off-the-shelf beams,

as well as some more modest
profiles where possible.

Doing a lot of head scratching,

we've managed to get within the
price and keep that Speyer design.

If Harry can keep
finding clever ways

to emulate Speyer's architecture,
then this place could be remarkable.

But he's already spent over
half of the 400 grand budget,

so it's unlikely.

By the end of the year,

Harry and Briony aren't moving in
to their steel-framed surf house as
they'd hoped,

but at least they are celebrating
another major milestone -

the installation of the
large, floating steel frame.

As long as Harry and his team
can overcome one final snag.

The crane's about three foot
too short, we think,

to get to the cantilevered bit.

And the risk is that we hold too
much weight on the end of it

and it will topple.

It's the risk you run if you
insist on building on the cheap.

Harry could have hired
a bigger crane,

but it would have cost
an extra ?500 a day.

The crane operator,
Andrew, is seasoned

and he has a trick up his sleeve
to extend the boom arm

in the hope it'll just reach.

The further the boom comes down,
the less you can lift.

So with that extra eight metres on,

the boom can stay
a bit more upright,

so it should give you a bit of a
compromise to how far it can reach.

If it goes over the limit,
then I'll stop.

The steel frame
consists of 40 pieces,

weighing up to 1.7 tonnes each.

Of course,
they have to fit together perfectly.

It's easy to think, well, you've
got sodding great lumps of steel,

you know, it doesn't matter
whether it's a bit out or not.

It really does matter.

Down... Down, down...

Ah, shit.

We mustn't twist it.

Studs, roofs, floor level...

It's important that all of these
details are spot-on because

all of these levels will follow
all the way through the building.

So big lumps, small margins.

That's the challenge.

And yet it has to be delicate.

It's all right. It's just...

All right, man up, for fuck's sake.

This is going to take
forever to get going.

And they've still got
the biggest pieces to go,

the ones that make up the 18 metre
long span at the front

that'll define the building.

It's what I'm most worried about.

If they're too heavy then
the crane will topple.

The crane is at its height,
length and weight limit.

Come on. Three inches.

Yes! Yes.

It's in.

Harry's gamble has paid off.

It's great. It looks just
as I hoped it would be.

Who designs something like this, eh?

That's right, isn't it? Nuts.

Absolutely nuts.

Oh, well. Hopefully by the end
of the day, it'll be done.

By the New Year,
the steel structure is completed,

six months later than planned.

But worth the wait.

Hello.

How are you? All right, thanks.

Happy New Year. Thank you.

Happy New Year. And to you.

Galvanised steel. Yes. Exposed.

It's the business, isn't it?
This is very, very chunky.

Chunky, but it's thinner
than it was.

That's four millimetres thick,

it's about as thick as
a piece of hardboard. Yup.

In fact... Don't! Does it...
Stop it!

Does it wobble? Oh, it does!
It does a bit.

It does wobble. It does a bit.
You don't...

It won't wobble when there's
a house on top of it, though.

It's probably twice as deep
as we need it to be, structurally.

But by narrowing the gauge,
you've saved yourself,

what, altogether, how much?

We've saved about ?20,000.

That's great, isn't it?

It is still wobbling.

LAUGHTER

The steel certainly delivers
the Speyer DNA Harry wanted.

But where this structure
differs from Speyer's house

is in its scale.

This place is 30% larger.

It is just bloody big.

But once it's filled... No.

No, no, no, Briony.
Some internal walls...

It's incredibly big, this building.
I think it'll shrink.

LAUGHING: You think it'll shrink!

There's no getting around the
fact that this structure's

going to require a
great deal of glazing,

and that is likely
to be very expensive.

How much have you got
budgeted for that?

36. Thousand? Yeah.

For those two, or...?
For the entire floating box.

We have had one quote for 80.

Um...yeah.

The glazing is the last big unknown.
And...

..we're hoping it won't
finish us off!

Super sizing Speyer on such
a shoestring budget

is asking for trouble.

It's sort of too big for
a family house, really.

And they could have saved
so much money

if they'd made it just
a little bit smaller.

In fact,

I reckon if, weirdly, this building,
as it currently stands,

overnight, shrank in the rain
by, say, 15-20%,

I don't take anybody tomorrow
would notice the difference.

In North Cornwall, Harry and Briony
are three months over schedule on

their steel frame surf house.

And to make matters worse, an
unprecedented snowstorm just adds to

their woes.

The original plan was to move in at
Easter, into the bedroom end,

and then finish the rest.

That might be a bit optimistic now.

We have to be in soon, otherwise we
will run out of money.

We've got to rent the cottage out.
We can't be sitting in that cottage

over the summer, because that's
the prime time to rent it out.

And so we've got to be in there.

Their budget is now under a lot of
pressure.

Harry's anxiety is understandable.

I was hoping we we'd spend
around ?400,000 on the house.

And it's coming in already at
about 450.

However, two weeks later,
the stresses and strains of the

project are suddenly thrown into
perspective.

So, a few days ago, we heard some
very sad news for everyone, which

is that Ken, the boss man, has died,

has passed away in his sleep at
home.

You know, he was just always so
patient with us.

We asked every day, you know, really
stupid questions, and he would just

put up with it and teach us and...

..in his charming Cornish way, and
everyone's, everyone's very upset.

Yeah, we'll really miss him.

It's, it's been a great shock.

Because he wasn't just a builder,
he was a friend of ours too,

and a friend of the family.

How many did he build? Over 30?
Yeah, in excess of 30 houses he'd

done over his years. Whether they're
all still standing, to say...
THEY LAUGH

That's what Ken would say,
whether they're still standing.

Ken's attitude was, "The show's got
to go on, and it will go on."

Easter arrives, and unsurprisingly
the bedrooms aren't remotely ready

for Harry, Bryony and the children
to move into.

Harry's stress levels are rising.

The cottage is booked out for
holiday lets, and we need to get in

the house, so we need to get the
floor in and we need to get the
glazing in.

And all the deadlines have been
pushed to their limit.

So Harry decides to take a
significant gamble to rush things by

pouring the screed floor before the
house is weathertight.

Which is madness!

Work inside now stops for three
weeks while this dries out properly.

Hopefully we don't have too much
rain between now and then, because

it hates drips. If it drips in here,
then you get these big pot marks,

and this is our finished floor,
so...

..we don't want big holes.

Three weeks on, and by sheer luck

the gamble with the weather
has paid off, so far.

But with the roof still not
finished, Harry chances the wrath of

the building gods once again by

forcing Mark to plaster the
bedrooms.

If it rains and if your water does
come in, basically this is done for.

Cos plaster, the lot will be gone.
We'll lose the plasterboard, the

plaster with it, but Harry is
insistent, he wants us to keep

pushing on, regardless. It's not my
choice by any stretch of the

imagination. It's totally the wrong
way around to do it, but Harry wants

to do it, and at the end of the day,
as I keep saying, he is the

paymaster, so you do what he wants.

Meanwhile, the four-metre-tall
windows for the living space have

arrived, ready to be installed.

Only it turns out there's a lot
less glass in this building than the

one they set out to emulate.

We've had to lose a loss of glass
at the front and at the sides,

and that makes it look less like the
Speyer house,

and that has been quite painful.

We were getting quotes of
between 80 and 100.

I mean, that was just too high. We
couldn't... It's not even a
starting point.

And we had a budget for about 40,
45, so we had to find another way

of reducing the cost, and the
obvious thing to do was to reduce

the amount of glass, which is what
we've done.

Yeah, it is painful, because it's a
diversion away from the Speyer
house.

Blimey. The relationship between
this home and the Speyer house is

becoming ever more tenuous.

I hope Harry doesn't
live to regret it.

But there is another more pressing
problem to attend to.

The consequence of Harry having
already poured the floor is that the

installers have less room
to fit the glass.

The floor shouldn't be there,
cos we asked for the floor not

to be poured until we got the glass
in, cos there is a minimal

distance with the glass, about
30 mil we're talking, to get

the glass in, which is not a lot.
So we're going to have to bring

the glass in a bit askew, to miss
the steel at the head.

If you touch that glass on a bit
of steel about this sort of force,

the glass will...

Then it's all over. Cos the
edges are the most fragile part of
the glass.

Once they're in, they're
brilliant. It'll take a bullet.

It's like flying a kite.

Installing the first piece is a
modest struggle.

Be careful there. Just watch that
corner on the steel guttering.

There's no metal down there, do you
know, is there? No.

Stop, stop, stop there! Stop there!
Land it there.

Oh, happy days!
We make it look hard.
HE LAUGHS

But with the second piece, it's not
just the raised floor they need to
deal with.

There's a two-tonne steel column in
the way, too.

Right, go down, down on the head.
Down... I don't like this one.

Stop there, stop there, stop there,
stop there.

The opening is too small
to get this glass in.

And it's just the awkwardness of
this steel being here.

And this glass had to go in first,
because we couldn't, we couldn't

have got that glass in cos the
floor's been laid.

And now that crane can't lift that,
cos it's tight there with

the strap, so we've just got to go
to the old-fashioned way of
manpower,

just to get that last critical lift.

All 280 kilos are pivoting on a
piece of plywood.

Just keep it off that steel.

The edge is millimetres away from
the steel column.

Right, go down, down on the head.
We've got, we've got to try and

swing it right in, past that pillar,
and then get rid of the crane.

After three. One, two, three...
Push it to me, lads.

Push it to me.
Keep the head out of the steel.

Right, OK. Release the sucker.
Get rid of the sucker.

Fingers out. Stop there.
Stop there. Stop there.

Phew!

25 years of glazing, that has got to
be one of the top-drawer, one of the

hardest bits of glass I've put in.

Yeah, we've got it. Sound.

It's taking a long time.

We were supposed to be over halfway
by now, but we're not.

So I'm a bit worried about time.

I just want to get it all in today.

Right, come on, then, lads.
When people are building their own

houses and stuff, they don't
realise, if they do floors and put

ceilings up and then expect the
glass to go in, big bits of glass,

heavy bits of glass, with a crane,
that's where you get your problems.

It takes 14 hours and a Herculean
effort by the window fitters, but

all nine pieces are finally in
place.

This building has at last its eyes,
and now that it's properly

watertight, you can begin to see
what the main living space could be.

HE LAUGHS

Oh, heavens.

Oh, welcome to the
Southwest Visitor Centre.

Vast!

What do you think? Erm...
It's a lot of everything.

THEY LAUGH

You look quite small in here!

This is so big! I mean, this single
room is one of the largest I've
seen.

I suppose it's an obvious question,
why did you put the glazing in the
corner and not there?

So, walking in... Yes. ..to this
point, you kind of feel that the

building is restraining you... Yes.
..rather than engaging you.

But there's a very, very deliberate
choice. It is very deliberate.

We had to lose a lot of the glass at
the front and at the sides.

The quotes were just too high.

I have said this, I think more men

than women desire to make monuments
to ourselves. I agree.

We definitely, this does feel like
monument-making.

But a monument that we want to share
with people. You know, we want our

family and friends... Yes, it's
a generous monument.

But then, is that showing off? Maybe
that's just... There's an element
of that.

Three weeks later, and there is a
final push to get the bedroom end of

the "monument" ready for Harry and
Briony to move into,

or rather camp out in until the
rest of the house is finished.

We've had to really push to get in
this soon.

We needed to vacate because we've
got guests coming this weekend.

It has been a big push to get to
this point.

But the house is still being built
out of sequence.

The roof's not finished, and the
boiler's not even installed yet.

'I think everybody starts
self-builds with good intentions.'

Oh, bollocks!

Probably Harry didn't understand

what is involved in building
a house like this.

There are set ways you build a
house, and we're

doing it totally different.
HE LAUGHS

Now that the bedroom end is just
about habitable, the builders move

on to the vast living space.

However, the income from their
holiday cottage is not keeping pace

with their ever-mounting costs, so
there is a pressure to fit it all

out as cheaply as possible. We've
got these bloody great walls we've

got to put something on, and instead
of plaster-boarding, plastering,

painting, three coats of paint,
skirting board, we've instead come

up with this idea of putting ply
straight on the walls.

So it's cheap to buy and takes a
bit longer to put up, but with the

shadow gap, I think it's looking
really smart.

Harry had the idea for the panelling
for the timber walls,

but that was it, really.

He just, he bought the timber and...
let us go for it.

We have to make it up as we go
along, really.
HE LAUGHS

Tom's done really well, just
executing something like this

without a drawing or a picture or an
idea, really, just...

"Let's get it up and see what it
looks like."

Harry the gambler continues to
tiptoe a fine line between

creativity and cost-cutting.

His bravado is breathtaking.

I know I've given Harry a hard
time over this project, over his

almost cavalier attitude in terms of
planning, and the size of this

building, and
he is guilty, of course.

He is guilty of so many things.

He's guilty of demanding too much
of his family.

He's guilty of actually exacting
too much commitment from everybody

building the darn thing. He's
guilty of pushing too hard,

of trying too hard,
of reaching for the stars.

In other words, like all of us,

he is simply guilty of being human.

It's 15 months since Harry and
Briony sent out to build

a surf house near
the north Cornish coast.

Their inspiration,

an American Modernist home in
Chicago designed by James Speyer,

whose architectural style was
immortalised in the '80s film

Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Oh, just look at that.
Isn't it pretty?

Not very much like
the Speyer building,

though, not now it's got that

great big orange wall of
cladding at the front.

More of a long-distance homage.

What is undoubtedly Speyer-like,
and all the better for it,

is the chunky exposed steel frame
of the living space

floating over the valley.

And it's the real thing,

not some other material
like timber dummied up.

But that's where
the similarity with Speyer ends.

The more pragmatic bedroom end
is rooted firmly to the ground,

and there's a lot less glass
than Speyer used, too.

How are you?
Really well, nice to see you.

Hello. Hello, Briony.

I've seen it from across
the valley and it looks good.

I think we're happy with
the final result, aren't we?

Yeah, very happy with
the end result. Worth the wait?

Worth the wait, yeah.
It looks like it's really nestling.

Yeah, we really wanted it to settle
into the landscape and not

stick out like a spaceship.

And so, how is it? How's life?

It's great, yeah.

It's so nice to be in, it's so nice
to be living in the full space,

having just lived in the bedrooms
for so long. It's a huge relief.

The cladding is on. The cladding's
on, and we like the larch.

It feels like it's more natural,

because all the glass and steel
started to stick out a bit.

That's interesting, isn't it?

Big glass, steel house, stick it in
the middle of some woodland

and it says, "Actually, no, I'd like
a little bit of that wood..." Yeah.

"..back." Mm.

It's not at all suggestive
of Speyer.

Much gentler, actually.

Speyer was pure glass,
and perhaps a bit impractical.

But it's what inspired us to
create this. This is our version.

So, I'd like to take a closer look.

Inside, the house immediately
delivers a theatrical punch

with that 30 metre long skylight
that runs into the living space.

Oh! Oh, yeah, this is nice.

That great slot of light down
the building leading you forward.

That leads you into this space.

Quite theatrical, and also quite
ecclesiastical, that, isn't it?

Wow. Mm.

Very beautiful.

These two walls, we talked a lot
about these being kind of,

as it were, replacements for
glazing, but I have to say,

you don't question that coming in,
partly because of this slot

which leads into that thin
vertical pane, which is beautiful.

And partly because, in fact,

the cladding treatment
is so nice on them.

And that can't have been cheap.

It was labour time. Yeah.

It was a labour of love from
Tom the carpenter. Yeah.

It took probably a bit less
than it would have been

to plaster the whole lot,
but we much prefer it.

Do you wish that you'd just
skimmed the ceiling?

I like the texture of it,
I really do.

It's got that sort of warehousey
feel to it. Yeah, that's good. Yeah.

And the space,

it's shrunk slightly from being
the largest room I've never been in

to annoyingly something which
seems 20% smaller now.

That's rather clever.

Harry and Briony have pulled off
this annoying feat by filling

their massive living space
with massive stuff.

Everything is super-scale here.

This is what we've been looking
forward to most, I think,

having our sofa in
and being able to sit down

and look out over the trees.

This is an amazing thing. I don't
know where the idea came from.

Well, it came from a sort of
practical need for a room divider,

and a bit of sound absorption.

And so we thought books absorb
sound... Make a bookcase.

..make a bookcase. Wow.
This thing moves, does it?

Yeah, it moves.
How easy is it to move?

Just going to take a big
initial shove, I think. Yeah, OK.

And then we're off.
Off it goes.

Oh, yes!

I like that.

This is a wall that moves
as opposed to a room divider.

And the scale of everything
is oversized here,

like the plywood kitchen.

So, this kitchen is also big.

This is 10, 3.5 metres, maybe, long?
Yeah, 3.5, I think. It's...

But in this building,
looks somehow to scale.

And equally, the cupboards are
a mile and a half high. Yeah.

Well, they're tall.

And the table over there,
which is a big table,

it's six foot long, right?

It looks tiny.

But the largest,
the tallest things here

are the four metre tall windows.

Their gift is a view of sky and
landscape that is totally immersive.

That is my favourite view.

View out into the forest.

We're on a cantilever
at this point, right? Yes.

It just feels like you're flying.

And you've just got this junction of
the glass into the corner

with no support from the lid above,
which is glorious.

Interesting, isn't it?

Because of the height of the glass,

you've got almost no interruption
between you and it.

It's quite a beautiful little Eden
you have.

Also in the floating steel section
is an office for Harry and Briony.

And in the bedroom end,
along the 20 metre long corridor,

sits the children's rooms,
a guest room,

and outside the main bedroom,

a powerful bespoke stencil painting
by a local artist.

I don't know if I lived here
whether or not,

after a few sherbets
in the evening,

trying to crawl along this corridor,

the last thing I saw before I went
to bed was this at night,

I'm not sure how well I'd far.

But you haven't got anything like
this in your bedroom, have you?

Is it a haven of serenity?

Yeah, I think so.

I remember seeing this being
plastered while the roof

was not on.

That is true, we did it backwards.

But I don't think it shows.

It's rather heartening to find
something which is much more snug,

private and enclosed. Yeah.

In other words, thank goodness
these rooms are normal sized.

This is a hybrid house,
part timber surf hut,

part modernist whim emulating
an American masterpiece.

But on this Cornish hill,

it seems to have assumed
one coherent identity.

Construction took eight months
longer than expected,

but where did that
400 grand budget finally land?

How much have you spent?

Do you know?

I know we're at between 500 and 510.

Well, so actually
that's roundabout ?1,600, ?1,700

a square metre, which,
you know, is very good value.

You know, I ask these questions
about money and time, but actually,

of course, in the end they don't
matter in relation to the people.

I think you've had a relatively
happy project.

What's your secret,
in terms of that?

I think he's good at selecting,
he's good at spotting talent and,

you know, sort of gaining
their faith in his vision.

I think that's what's kept
people going, you know,

when it's been tough.

Yeah, and I think when we were
really sapped of energy,

I did think it probably does feel

like Harry has given birth
to this house.

You know, it is that...
It has been that long and painful.

Ken and Mark were your midwives?
Yes, exactly.

Yes. Invaluable midwives.

I think you followed the best
advice in the end,

which was to rely on really good
people to help you.

Yeah, I accepted my limits
early on in this.

And relying on other people
is, well, it's quite nerve-racking,

because you put your budget
and your life in their hands,

in a way, but if you've got
good people, then that's...

I just love that everything
you look at, you know who did it.

And I hope that we'll remember
because...

All of it's Ken, poor old Ken.
I hope that...

I don't know...

Anyway, it's all right.

This is his work.

Great buildings are only great
because of the love and

the energy that human beings
put into them.

Work was a large part of Ken's life
and hopefully this is

a good legacy that he leaves behind.

He deserves the credit.

Look, I know I was a bit hard on
Harry for the duration of

this project, but by the same token,
I've been hugely impressed by

his humility,
his readiness to admit blame,

his preparedness to learn,

his generosity of spirit,

in taking an idea which was,
well, at best eccentric,

an inspiration from one building
he's never visited,

and then sharing it with
everybody else on the project,

enthusing them, inspiring them.

You know, this isn't the house that
Harry and Briony built,

it's the house that Harry and Briony
and countless others built together.

People like Jamie and Tom and Olly
and Mark and Ken.

There is a lot of their love
in this place,

and it is the better for it.

With our children,

their allergies are so severe that
they could be really, really ill.

Everything we put in the house
is geared to our family's health.

Wow, it looks like some
terrible disaster movie.

It's been very stressful,
very stressful.

We don't know if it's going to work.
All we can do is try.

It will only all be worthwhile
if the kids' health improves.

If.

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