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The Middle Class obsession with food and property TV shows continues apace. I consider myself firmly in said group, getting back just in time of an evening to catch up with the seemingly endless editions of Masterchef with those two shouty blokes crying out what a huge day/competition/challenge it will be that day. Last night there was a seemless sequeway into Grand Designs, where people you inevtiably become irritated with try to rebuild a Middle Aged church tower/divert a river and create a pastiche castle/dig a massive £300,000 hole and then plonk a German prefabricated modernist house in the middle of it. On a hill in Bath. With traditional stone cladding.
The latter took place on last night's show. It led to somewhat mixed feelings - was it reallly necessary to transport half a hill's worth of soil to achieve you ultimate dream, and then claim you are creating a carbon positive house? Not very convincing. But you couldn't help but be convinced by the german outfit that created the finished product, Baufritz, which looked pretty immaculate. And the factory over the channel was a thing of wonder. When do we get one of those over here?
What it does emphasise is how difficult it is to design, coordinate and project manage a modern construction project. My only concern is that programmes like these dont show us how much skill and expertese go in to creating these buildings. I guess the thoughts of building services engineers doesn't make great telly!
Posted by: Scott Newson | 25 February 2008 at 11:51 AM
We will get a factory like this when there is demand, however, programs like Grand Designs give the impression that offsite construction is only for the few brave hearted souls out there. Unfortunately ask the average person on the street and offsite construction means nothing to them or worse still they think of all the post war prefabs
Posted by: Ray Khan | 26 February 2008 at 09:54 AM