Kits and Mortar

Yes, it’s that time of year again, when self-builders and Grand Designs fans everywhere get all excited about the Grand Designs Home of the Year Awards. This year, the judges are:

• George Ferguson (Chair) - architect, writer and broadcaster
• Wayne Hemingway - former co-founder of Red or Dead, now specialises in affordable and social design in housing.
• Ken Shuttleworth - architect
• Will Alsop - architect with an OBE
• Pooran Desai - eco-property developer and sustainability consultant, also with an OBE

(Now, I don’t know whether years in tech has made me quite sensitive to this, but there are no female judges listed, which I think is a pretty poor showing. OBEs up the wazoo, but no women. Grand Designs, you can and should do better than that.)

Sadly, all the official site has to say about the awards is:

During a week long television show, broadcast on Channel 4, the great British public will be able to vote for their favourite homes in each category and for the overall Home of the Year winner………keep an eye out for more information.

And that each build will be judged on these criteria:

• Function
• Originality
• Innovation
• Aesthetics
• Sustainability

Although the Channel 4 site tells us what the categories are, it’s not much more forthcoming than that. So, we have these awards to look forward to:

• Best Restoration
• Best New Build
• Best Conversion
• Best Eco Home
• Best Redesigned Home

However, Pete and Christine Hope of Blacksheep House, which I enthused about in April, coincidentally emailed me with a bit more info:

Blacksheep House has been entered for the conversion category which will be broadcast at 8.05 next sunday (May 4th) there is a short film about the house and then a public vote, if we get voted as the best conversion we will be through to the finally on Friday 9th so we need every one to vote for us.

And finally, The Architect’s Journal also has an interview with Kevin McCloud about the awards, which are running in this format for the first time this year.

I will try to do a bit more digging, but I can’t believe that information about these awards is both so scarce and so scattered. It’s taken me an hour to piece all this together, when I thought this was going to be a quick and easy post! Still, if I can find out more, I’ll blog it, and save you all the hassle of hunting the info down for yourselves.