With building and budget blowouts, Grand Designs Australia reimagines what it actually means to be ‘grand’

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For the 12th season of Grand Designs Australia, architecture professor Anthony Burke is seeing a shift. In the age of rapidly rising house prices and a cost-of-living crisis, the definition of what is a “grand design” is being reimagined.

“We’re leaning into the issues of the day a lot more,” says Burke. “The way I put it is, we’re still called Grand Designs Australia but it’s really about grand ideas and ambitions. People are bringing innovation into the idea of home in Australia with a fresh energy but they’re not necessarily huge houses. That’s what’s exciting because there’s so much grassroots innovation happening.”

Grand Designs Australia host outside the ‘earthship’ house in Tasmania featured in episode one.

One example of out-of-the-box thinking is in the first episode, which opens with a couple, Matt and Kate, who moved to Tasmania after being locked out of Melbourne’s rising property market. Their beautiful build has been inspired by the eco-friendly and upcycled ‘earthship’ style of architecture first developed in the 1970s in New Mexico.

“They’ve taken that model and they’ve tried to upgrade it for a contemporary Australian lifestyle,” says Burke. “Some of the earlier ones, we visited a couple [of houses] while we were filming, they look a bit like hobbit houses. So we’ve upgraded from that; it’s a finished product that looks like a house that you would recognise. And, of course, all the materials are recyclable and sustainable, so in terms of carbon it’s a fantastic idea.”

The concept of home is something 54-year-old Burke has been pondering at a time when Australia is dealing with ongoing issues about how difficult it is for young people to get into the property market.

Grand Designs Australia host Anthony Burke (left) with Kate and Matt inside their earthship house.

“I’m thinking about it a lot,” says Burke. “I’ve got two adult kids at home and I’m looking at them, going, I want you to have a good life. But I’m thinking a good life is probably not a single detached home for my kids, it’s some other version of home. The idea of that Australian home dream – this is a generation where that will be evolved into its next version. It simply has to.

“Seventy per cent of people under the age of 35 do not imagine ever buying their own home in Australia. Now that’s a statistic that really freaks me out because it means they don’t have a clear idea of what their options are, they just know what they can’t have. So I think we have to help that generation imagine what they can have and why that might be actually even better than a single detached house.”

The rapid rise in building costs has also affected this season in ways Burke had not seen before. The Grand Designs Australia team usually anticipates that two of the 10 houses featured each season will run over in terms of build length but that estimate was blown out of the water.

“This time, because of the changing environment out there – cost of materials, accessing trades, all of that – eight out of 10 houses went way longer than we expected,” says Burke. “It’s just, the reality of building today has become quite challenging. The cost of trades and materials have gone up 40 per cent since the last season. How do you get any certainty when you’re a home owner trying to operate in that context? It’s very difficult.”

And what of the Grand Designs curse, a theory that appearing on the show dooms projects to delays and unforeseen struggles? Burke dismisses the notion with an easy laugh, saying it’s just the nature of building to run into issues. “Nice idea but no, that’s every build!”

Even with all the issues surrounding creating a home in Australia, Burke says there is still no shortage of people willing to open up their build sites to the Grand Designs Australia cameras.

“Not all, which fills me with optimism, actually, because there are lots of people trying to do different things out there that want to tell their story,” he says. “That idea of opening up the possibility of architecture in this country right now is so important for us all.”