The series return of top-rating program Grand Designs Australia, hosted by leading Australian architect Peter Maddison, explores the motivations, memories and connections behind the builds going beyond the basic form and function, when season 5 premieres Thursday, October 9 at 8.30pm on The LifeStyle Channel on Foxtel.
Although one of the most exciting builds of the season, a home built completely out of shipping containers, was borne from functionality first – to simply keep the water out. Its genesis, was a story of survival. After losing their home and its entire contents to the devastating 2011 Queensland floods, the solution was to go completely water proof. In what is one of the most gruelling house building adventures ever, watching one man slice, dissect and carve up these huge steel boxes and shaping them into a family home is something to behold. The end result is jaw dropping – a design feat that belies his ridiculous 6-month time line.
While in the inner city suburb of Port Melbourne in Victoria – an area brimming with old single fronted worker’s cottages – another couple, obsessed with Avant Guard architecture, are building their own water house. As what appears to be a simple steel and ply building that sprouts 3 storeys above the ground, no one is quite prepared for the exterior. Thirty black, voluptuous 2-metre high water tanks will make up the entire skin – something that is guaranteed to get the neighbours talking.
In the Mornington Peninsula suburb of Mt Eliza in Victoria, the moral of the story is, never predict your own short build. When Georgina optimistically tells Peter Maddison in 2010, that her modernist house will be built in 6-months, Murphy’s Law ensures that isn’t going to happen. Little does she know she’d be out by more than 4-years. The final house may be fabulous, but the long battle to build it forms most of this story, as neighbours, the council, the bank and the GFC all contribute to the timeline and ensure it becomes the slowest build in Grand Designs Australia history.
Once again Grand Designs Australia brings the characters, the houses and the stories together in an insightful season of inspiration and appreciation. The 10-part season is produced by FremantleMedia, exclusively for Foxtel’s The LifeStyle Channel.