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Grand Designs House of the Year S08 E04 2025
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00:00Hello, and here's the weather.
00:02For today's forecast, expect scattered flashes of design brilliance
00:06with prolonged periods of architectural showmanship.
00:09There's a strong chance of concrete at ground level,
00:12timber cladding moving eastwards and intermittent glimpses of polished terrazzo.
00:17Light will play a key role, occasionally dappled, frequently dramatic
00:21and sometimes rather boldly emerging from beneath the stairs.
00:26Temperatures are set to rise in kitchens with underfloor heating,
00:29particularly where there's a hidden wine fridge.
00:31Wind resistance may be tested in houses built on stilts.
00:36And viewers are advised to take shelter immediately if anyone talks about flow.
00:42Welcome to House of the Year.
00:45The competition is hotting up for the Royal Institute of British Architects' House of the Year
00:51as we welcome the last batch of long-listed homes.
00:56That's clever.
00:57Oh, heavens.
00:57The pressure's building, and the competition is fiercer than ever for a place on the shortlist.
01:03Oh, this is really, really good.
01:06From houses that were built whilst under attack from midges...
01:10We had to hide in a caravan for an afternoon.
01:13Three grown men hiding in a caravan.
01:16To homes that were built to the strictest of tolerances...
01:20Tim is known as Millimetre Tim in the business round.
01:23The houses we explore will be whittled down to a shortlist of just seven.
01:28I mean, what the heck?
01:31At the end, we'll discover which will be House of the Year 2025.
01:37So get ready.
01:38Grease all nipples and lubricate all joints.
01:41So far, five homes have claimed their place on the shortlist.
02:07Kirk and the Craig on the Isle of Harris.
02:11Hastings House, a triumph of engineering and elegance.
02:15And Triangle House, a house that takes you to the Caribbean.
02:18Then there's a Mento, a carefully crafted cruciform family home.
02:24And Jack's Barn, a barn conversion that keeps its character.
02:30There are two places left on the shortlist and five more buildings to explore.
02:37Snooping around these homes with me is the architect Damien Burrows.
02:41To have a courtyard garden here is quite something.
02:47And the conservation architect, Natasha Huck.
02:50Oh, wow, look at this.
02:54Some houses are born beautiful.
02:57Some acquire beauty.
02:58Others have beauty thrust upon them.
03:01Usually by an architect with a bold vision and a host of power tools.
03:04This category is all about transformation.
03:08And not the kind that involves a new doormat and a pharaoh and bull tester bot.
03:13These are epic, drafty bungalows.
03:16Weary barns.
03:17Structures long past their prime.
03:20Reimagined, reconfigured and re-emerged as architectural swans.
03:25They've been wrapped in zinc.
03:27Filled with light.
03:28Given poetry, purpose and soul.
03:31Oh, it's so stirring.
03:32I think I'm beginning to feel it'll transform myself.
03:35I might start wearing linen.
03:40Barth is experiencing a transformation of its own.
03:44You come here for george and grandeur, creamy stone and the odd bit of Regency cosplay.
03:50You don't come here for bungalows.
03:55But maybe you should.
03:58This is a house of wood shingle.
04:00A bungalow utterly transformed with a new skin of timber.
04:07Thousands of pieces of it.
04:12Hi.
04:13Hi.
04:13Good to meet you.
04:14Hi.
04:14The owners are Celia and Keith.
04:17Excellent place to be living.
04:19It's sort of ecolic and befits a wooden house, I suppose.
04:24You've got a little shingle wooden house in the woods.
04:26Yes.
04:26Yeah.
04:27Yeah.
04:28It used to be a 1960s kind of low energy bungalow.
04:34I mean, you say low energy as in really poor.
04:36Poor energy.
04:37Yeah.
04:37And then we wanted to kind of upgrade it, retrofit it so that we could put in some sustainable
04:45heating elements.
04:46Yeah.
04:47And then the shingle came along as a kind of cladding to cover all the insulation.
04:52But it looks beautiful.
04:53It is beautiful.
04:53It looks beautiful.
04:54Because they're coarsed.
04:55Yeah.
04:56They're not, you know, dropping and rising.
04:58So they're coarsed.
04:59Yeah.
05:00And, of course, they're overlapped so that the joints are always staggered.
05:04Yeah.
05:04If we did it again on a bungalow, I think it's not the place to do the cedar shingle because
05:10it's such a vast kind of amount of square meterage.
05:13Yeah.
05:14But it is beautiful.
05:15And from a drone shot, it looks great.
05:17When you're working with an architect, you're quite often taking a sort of godlike view of
05:24it.
05:24So you're seeing 3D models and you're looking and you're kind of seeing a building in a
05:29way that you never really truly see.
05:31Yeah.
05:32You go around to someone's house and knock on the door and they say, come in, would you
05:34like the tour?
05:36And you, no, not really.
05:37Actually, now I've just come to see you.
05:39Yeah.
05:40But when people come here, you should just say, would you like to see the roof?
05:43Yeah.
05:43Yeah.
05:43Got a ladder here.
05:44Got a ladder, yeah.
05:45Get out there.
05:46It's a hidden asset, isn't it?
05:48A hidden beauty, a hidden gem.
05:49Hidden money pit.
05:51Yeah, okay.
05:54More like an investment, I'd say.
06:00Along the back of the house are the three children's rooms and parents' bedroom suite,
06:05all connected by a vaulted corridor with skylights that leads to the new entrance hall.
06:11At the near end of the front half is the glass-walled kitchen diner.
06:16Next to that is a TV room.
06:19And at the far end is the living room with views across the valley.
06:30Inside, this place does not feel like a conventional bungalow, compartmentalized and closed off.
06:35No, instead, you can see down the length of the building.
06:38It feels connected and open.
06:43It's really neat.
06:45Really neat.
06:47Celia and Keith's architect has pulled off a clever trick, too, in the way he's divided up the house.
06:52So this entire depth, this is social space.
06:59Yeah.
06:59Yes.
06:59And then all the rooms behind this are all the cellular bedrooms.
07:03Yeah.
07:04The living and sleeping spaces are separated by a corridor that divides the building into two.
07:13We can kind of close it off so that this space is completely separate from the rooms at the back.
07:18Yeah.
07:19It's almost like the back part of the house is what would traditionally be like the upstairs of the building.
07:25And then this front part is like the downstairs.
07:27So we continue that separation even though it's all on one level.
07:31Walking through the kitchen and down to the sunken living room, your perspective suddenly shifts.
07:40Oh, yes, down some steps.
07:43Oh, so the whole thing kind of expands.
07:47It lifts as you walk into it.
07:49Oh, it's like two or three and a half meters or something, that sheet of glass.
07:53So you step down into a sort of sky observatory, really.
07:58Yeah, which is actually kind of almost exactly split across the middle so the horizon cuts halfway across those windows.
08:07These clouds suddenly appear to be more powerful because you're framing this kind of great skyscape.
08:17What I love about this place is the variety of experiences that it offers.
08:22No two rooms in here are the same.
08:24From a room which just grabs that huge, expansive landscape and that view to Wales beyond to the most intimate, private window that's nestled into the hillside.
08:37And then into this.
08:38Oh, my Lord.
08:40This is the first bungalow I've ever seen that has a sort of ecclesiastical corridor with little cellular rooms off.
08:47It's like being in a monastery with these fantastic clear story lights that just grab sunshine, pull it into the building.
09:02I don't know why I'm whispering.
09:04Forgive me, bungalow, for I have stared.
09:10But beauty like this doesn't come easy.
09:13The process of making it can floor you.
09:18It was a long process.
09:20Yeah.
09:20And getting materials to site.
09:22I mean, just the logistics of being here.
09:24That was tough.
09:25And I think we had, you know, quite a few phone calls.
09:27Because a private drive sounds like a nice idea.
09:30Yeah.
09:30Until you kind of realise that you can't get a big truck or lorry down the drive and they've left everything on a pallet half a mile away.
09:39Yeah.
09:40Or just refuse to deliver stuff.
09:42So there's a couple of kind of delivery drivers that we knew they could get in with one of their kind of grabbers and drop stuff off.
09:50They've gone to a lot of trouble reinterpreting this bungalow.
09:59This underrated building form, now reimagined, is once again taking its place in the spotlight.
10:07I suppose we think of bungalows as being background buildings, don't we, you know, part of the supporting cast of the theatre of architecture that makes our cities and our towns.
10:20But what this place demonstrates is that you can take an individual from that supporting cast, you can believe in them, remodel them, reclose them, you can give them a script that works for them and you can transform them into a glamorous, eloquent, witty centre stage star.
10:50We've seen one shape-shifting home so far, four more to see before we find out which will be shortlisted for the House of the Year 2025.
11:01The next longlister we're visiting in our incredible transformations category is in Suffolk.
11:19I'm off to see it.
11:21It's an exciting new set of buildings that transforms not something that was already there, but the very way we could build our homes.
11:33Most homes squeeze all of their functions underneath one single roof.
11:38But I'm off to see a home that transforms that very idea.
11:43Four different buildings, four separate functions and one family.
11:48Welcome to Housestead.
12:02Housestead is four buildings arranged around a cross shape in a central courtyard.
12:08To the south is a glazed thatch living pavilion with a kitchen dining area, a lounge and bathroom.
12:14To the west is a solid brick working block containing a main bedroom with en-suite and office above.
12:21To the east is the sleeping block with five children's bedrooms and a guest bedroom.
12:27There is also a greenhouse structure to the front which acts as a winter garden.
12:32The corrugated metal north building is the utility block with a boiler room, garage, general store and upper level hangout.
12:39The owners are architect, husband and wife, Amir and Abigail.
12:46All of the elements of the building are so far apart.
12:49What was the idea behind that?
12:51One's a living function, one's a sleeping function, one's utility and one's work and study studio.
12:58It's really to sort of create four distinct zones where you have to go outside, experience the outdoors between the different functions.
13:06It wouldn't suit everybody, but I think if you enjoy being outdoors, you want a way of keeping a large family together as families develop.
13:17As the children grow older, they can have their own space and come together with the adults here.
13:28This is the living block where the family can eat, chat and socialise.
13:33It's part sitting room, part kitchen, part dining space, with a mezzanine floating above, all gloriously open plan.
13:44Oh, hello.
13:46This is, oh my word, it's stunning.
13:51The thatched roof seems to float on improbably thin seal columns.
13:55We wanted everything to be as light as possible so it's not detracting from the view.
13:59Nothing is bigger than it needs to be, so, you know, it's been finely engineered.
14:04Steel could have felt like a cold industrial material to use here, but it doesn't, thanks to the clever colour choice, Suffolk Pink, a colour used on buildings in the area.
14:16The Suffolk Pink came from the fact that they used pig's blood to become the sort of binding material.
14:23In a lime wash, so, you know, you mix protein and lime and it reacts and it creates the Suffolk Pink.
14:30So this is dragging Suffolk Pink into the 21st century.
14:33This is giving you a bit of oomph.
14:34Exactly.
14:36And it's the last thing people expect when they walk in here.
14:39Yes.
14:39This is a gorgeous pink.
14:40This is a gorgeous pink.
14:45Then, outside to another extraordinary building in this 21st century house stead.
14:51So we've come from a traditional thatched roof to lunar space module.
14:58You called it a lunar module landing and the way it was constructed really was very lunar-like.
15:03It was built in the area where we put the cars, assembled and then raised by a crane and very lightly popped onto the roof, bolted down.
15:13In one section?
15:14The whole thing was built, bar the staircase, and the whole thing was built, raised up and popped down.
15:19It was great fun watching it go up.
15:21You have people reporting it, like there's a spacecraft landing next door.
15:25It's what's happened.
15:25It was a giant step for Suffolk.
15:27It's very much a lookout.
15:30It's very much a place for us to get away from everything else, but also our studio.
15:34And it's quite high up.
15:36Not quite 33 steps, but it's 31 steps.
15:39It's a very nice journey, and you actually feel that you're just getting away from everything.
15:42You can go up there and just escape.
15:44Pick up a book, finish off a project.
15:47Curiouser and curiouser.
15:49From a space oddity to a greenhouse built into a bedroom wing.
15:54Nothing conventional about that either.
15:58This is a thermal camera, and it's a great way of showing exactly where the heat is in a house.
16:04Now, in a normal home, you'd expect to see hot spots around the radiators and chimney flues.
16:09But if we take a look down here...
16:13Wow.
16:14It's off the charts hot.
16:16By design, incredibly.
16:18This glazed corridor helps heat the hot water for the whole house.
16:23So we've got a sort of glazed corridor that is designed to get very hot during the day,
16:29and helps provide us with all our hot water.
16:32So you've got all this hot air here.
16:35It's rising up through there, passing over the copper pipes, and just heating up your hot water.
16:40Heating up the hot water.
16:41Meanwhile, the bedrooms behind remain really beautifully cool.
16:45Yeah, the temperature difference.
16:46You can really feel it, can't you?
16:47Yeah.
16:48You're in a greenhouse.
16:49I am.
16:50Oh, as soon as you come through here.
16:54I said, it's just really cool.
16:56Just calm.
16:57It's really cool and calm.
16:58The transition between the cool, the hot and outside into the fresh in such a short distance of time.
17:06It's quite something.
17:06That's thanks to the thick timber walls between the greenhouse and the bedrooms which contain the heat.
17:14In genius engineering, thoughtful design, and a love of innovation are all things to be admired about this house.
17:21Like all good things, though, Amir and Abigail had to wait for it.
17:25We didn't finish.
17:26We didn't finish.
17:27We didn't arrive when it had finished because we first moved in when the building had power but no lighting.
17:34So we camped.
17:35So we camped.
17:36We camped for quite a long time and we rigged up lights.
17:39And because we wanted to be here, we moved in at the very first opportunity.
17:44So it's been very much an adventure, really.
17:48The children have been very patient.
17:52But now, now it feels like it's properly finished.
17:55There's this thing called Suffolk time that we didn't know about.
17:58But we kind of managed to work with it.
18:01And it's, um, sorry, it's very different to London time.
18:05Well, Suffolk time is, you know, you know, things happen when they happen often.
18:10Not necessarily that we'd be aware that they're going to happen when they happen.
18:13But they do happen.
18:15They happen to a very good standard.
18:20I'll say this is a family home for the 21st century where children and adults each have their own space.
18:28Whether it's the utility block with its games room above or the private bedroom wings where everyone can retreat when they need to.
18:36And then, when they're ready, they gather to cook, to eat, to live together.
18:43The watchtower, the thatched glazed pavilion, the Nissen hut.
18:51Individually, these are striking, odd, even a little eccentric.
18:57But together, they form something that is unique and compelling.
19:01They form architecture that is bold, inventive, and entirely personal.
19:11We've seen two remarkable transformations so far.
19:15Three more to go before we find out which will be shortlisted for the House of the Year 2025.
19:20Some things just seem understated.
19:32A navy blue Vauxhall, a pair of traditional brogues.
19:36Jeff from the parish council.
19:38And then, then you look closer and you discover that Jeff is actually a belly dancer.
19:44And that the brogues are handmade in Florence.
19:47And that the Vauxhall does 0-60 in Lesson 5.
19:55Think of our next longlister as Jeff.
19:58It's in the quiet rolling hills of Somerset.
20:00It used to look like this, before it was knocked down and was reborn, as this.
20:12Definitely an upgrade.
20:15This is the orchards.
20:19The house is mostly single story, stepping down gently with the landscape.
20:24You enter into a wide hallway, the heart of the home, which leads one way to the public spaces and the other to the private wing.
20:31In the public area, there's an open-plan kitchen, dining, and living space, which opens onto a veranda.
20:38A flexible room nearby serves as a playroom, gym, or guest space.
20:43In the private wing, there are two children's bedrooms, a family bathroom, and a main bedroom suite at the far end.
20:50There's also a small, upper-level guest room.
20:54It's home to Jonathan and Kirstie.
20:56Hi.
20:57Hi.
20:57Kirstie, right?
20:58Yes.
20:59Hi.
20:59Hi, nice to meet you.
21:00And you too, Jonathan.
21:01Jonathan.
21:03This building catches you off guard, and that's entirely the point.
21:08Sometimes buildings are really loud, and, you know, they assert themselves, and this one does the opposite.
21:14Right up until the moment, you sort of get to there.
21:17It's a low-key entrance, and I think that fits us.
21:20We're sort of flashy on the inside, people.
21:24You walk into a beautiful open-plan kitchen.
21:30The RIBA judges admired the restrained material palette, and touches of luxury inside a home that was respectful to its rural setting.
21:38It's really nice, isn't it?
21:42And they've taken special measures to keep it that way, to defend it from the ravages of children.
21:49What is that kitchen tabletop made from?
21:51Is that stainless steel?
21:53Yep.
21:53Yes, stainless steel, four or five millimetres thick.
21:57How did that materialise?
21:58I think one of our themes throughout the whole house was, it's got to be robust.
22:05If it looks perfect on day one, but gets beaten up by family life, it just won't work for us.
22:10And you've got another one over there, which is just as reflective and beautiful, and that's hugely long.
22:14Is that one piece of steel?
22:16It is one giant piece.
22:16One single piece of steel.
22:18I don't think we knew it when we set out to make it, but there's only one place in the country who could cope with a piece of steel that much.
22:27But this room isn't just built to be durable.
22:30It hides a few playful secrets.
22:33Is that a door, that thing, that great big piece of wall?
22:36One of our few kid-free spaces.
22:38So the little one didn't realise this was an actual room for, what, four or five months of being here, because we kept that door closed.
22:48And then it blew her little mind one day when her brother had left it open, and she discovered this whole extra space.
22:52How she is going to grow up is such a complex, about deprivation, about being the junior, excluded member of the family.
22:58Or the joy of what's behind and off.
23:01All that, yeah.
23:02Or she'll just love surprises, yeah.
23:04In this house, no room is quite what you think it is.
23:10One stayed hidden for months behind a barely noticed door.
23:14And the corridor turns out it's doing far more than getting you from A to B.
23:20So this is the corridor stroke street?
23:23Yes.
23:24Sort of public highway.
23:26It's almost become an extra room.
23:28It's where kids come out of the bathroom, we get them dry, dry hair, brush teeth.
23:33We spend, yeah, a lot of time in this as a space.
23:36You've got a place where they can easily come out and put on plays and have a chat and create a den.
23:42And I read somewhere that every house should have at least one space big enough to get a toddler up to full speed.
23:50Those bits in between, the not-quite-a-room liminal spaces, are what I find most interesting about this house.
23:58These are the bits that quietly steal the show.
24:00We love to have labels for rooms.
24:04And the moment it hasn't got a label, the moment it's ambiguous, we worry that it's wasteful.
24:09It's been a surprise.
24:10Yeah, we really live in those in-between spaces.
24:13The rooms themselves aren't too shabby either.
24:19Full of personality and fun.
24:21That was important to the architect, Graham Bisley.
24:26Each room has a different character by what you see outside.
24:29That bathroom's almost like a little chapel.
24:31You kind of go in and the timber screen as you go in is a cross-shape and you go through and there's this little side chapel, which is the shower.
24:37Every day experience should be pleasurable.
24:40It's not just a functional thing, walking out of your room and going for breakfast or whatever.
24:44You can have an experience on that journey.
24:47This is a house that is thoughtful and full of surprise.
24:55It's calm but never dull.
24:58Every corner has been considered.
25:01Every detail earns its place.
25:03And the result is silently special.
25:09A home that works and one that keeps getting better the longer you spend time here.
25:15This is a quiet house.
25:19You know, it has its cholera and its eyes to the ground as it slowly slips its way through the grasses in the orchard.
25:28But, you know, it may be quiet, but it is also resilient and it's playful and it is strong and in places also ambiguous.
25:42I mean, it works a magic.
25:43And I'm sure that if I spent time here in its company, my blood pressure would lower and I would perhaps be more at peace with myself and even perhaps a little happier.
25:55Which makes it a really transformative building.
26:08Oh!
26:09You know you turn up at a party and somebody's just looking fantastic and you think, what is it?
26:15Is it their hair?
26:16They've got new glasses?
26:17They've been to the dentist?
26:18What is it?
26:19And then you realise they sort of just know what they're doing.
26:23It's just a gentle, all-over, even lift.
26:27Yeah.
26:29Like this next place.
26:33I'm in London looking at our next long lister.
26:38This is a house that's been transformed.
26:41But rather than being turned into something completely new, it's been redefined as a sophisticated version of itself.
26:48This was an unremarkable 1960s terraced house, now crafted into a piece of iconic-looking 1960s modernist architecture.
27:00The judges were awestruck by the fact it retained the character of the original building, yet was completely remade.
27:07In this masterfully reworked home, the ground floor is a spacious, double-height kitchen dining room, with a utility room and toilet next to it.
27:17On the first floor is a living room with outside balcony and a cosy snug.
27:24On the second floor are the two children's bedrooms and a bathroom.
27:28And on the third floor is the adult bedroom with ensuite.
27:32The architect who realised this extraordinary vision was Dingle Price.
27:41Hi, Danielle.
27:42Hi, welcome.
27:43Thanks, how are you?
27:44Well, you?
27:45You arrive into a small corridor.
27:48Above are stairs up to a living room and balcony, bedroom and bathroom.
27:53But the real magic is at ground floor level.
27:56It's so lush.
27:58The view teasingly opens out over the kitchen and dining room to an incredible garden beyond.
28:05What was here before?
28:07There was a kitchen on the left side and on the right there was a dining area, but of course it was all at the same level.
28:16It began as a bog-standard 1960s house.
28:19Now, Dingle has remade it in the language of brutalism, the cutting edge of high-end design in the 60s, when exposed concrete and bold form were the height of architectural fashion.
28:31A lot of the concrete in the building is exposing beams that were already there but were uncovered.
28:37But then we've also introduced a certain amount of new concrete.
28:41It's only when you get to ground level you can fully appreciate this extraordinary room.
28:46There's so much drama to this space.
28:50I mean, the height of the ceilings and then this view out to this lush garden.
28:54I mean, it's really unexpected.
28:56What did you have to do to create it?
28:58Well, the key to it is the excavation.
28:59There was a Victorian building that stood on this site.
29:03Oh, the building before the 1960s building?
29:06It just turned out that the original building had very, very deep foundations.
29:09And that meant relatively easily we could dig away the earth to create this high space.
29:15So we've excavated a metre and a half down from the original ground floor level.
29:20But from then on, Dingle had set himself an incredibly hard task by choosing to keep everything exposed.
29:28It's a project with no paint.
29:30Everything is the exposed materials which goes back to this sort of original idea of brutalism.
29:35But because of that, you know, it's very unforgiving.
29:38If you put a light switch in the wrong place, you can't just move it and repaint.
29:44You end up basically having to replaster the whole wall.
29:48There was nowhere to hide mistakes.
29:51No layer that could cover them up.
29:53Not the usual way of doing things.
29:55The contractor wasn't convinced to begin with.
29:57If I'm honest, we actually thought Dingle was going mad.
30:03Everything was experimental.
30:04It was definitely a challenge and it's not the way we usually do our projects
30:08because, you know, it costs a lot more money to experiment.
30:12I guess the most difficult for us was when we stripped the structure back to its original blockwork and brickwork.
30:20We couldn't see the vision.
30:25But who could argue with the elegance of the end result?
30:29Though what looks effortless now took days of trial and error that tested the limits of everyone involved.
30:35It's the level of craft, care and control here that makes this retrofit so quietly radical.
30:44Everything about this house challenges what we would normally expect.
30:47From a 1960s infill, from brutalist materials and from a retrofit.
30:53Instead of clearing everything away, the architect has made subtle adjustments to what was here.
30:58Completely transforming the space and really making the most of the character of the existing house.
31:05We've seen four houses so far transformed beautifully in different ways.
31:10There's one more to go before we find out which will make the shortlist.
31:13And then, from all those shortlisted homes, we'll discover which one will win the title for the House of the Year 2025.
31:19A key part of the architectural imagination is seeing how something can be transformed.
31:35To look at a building that's unloved and unused and imagine it as a place entirely new.
31:40Now, this building, sort of built by the architects Tonkin knew, began life as a rusty old water tower.
31:51They had the vision to transform it, to turn the concrete stem into a staircase and the sealed tank at the top into this.
31:59A beautiful living room with the best seats in the house.
32:04I mean, literally.
32:06It is a bold bit of rethinking.
32:08But our next longlister, they've pulled off something arguably even more extreme.
32:14Once upon a time, on the Isle of Wight, in the early 1900s, a humble cowshed was built.
32:26With slurry underfoot, hay overhead and the occasional swallow nesting in the rafters.
32:33A hundred years later, it was deserted, derelict and forgotten.
32:41Until Joseph, an artist and academic, learned about it.
32:46I saw some photographs and I was immediately attracted.
32:50So much so that I told the kids, I'll be back in an hour.
32:53I identified where the barn was, got in the car, came here, let myself in.
33:00It was open, sort of.
33:02And stood in the courtyard and thought, like, this is where I want to live.
33:09And so, the old buyer was born.
33:13An extraordinary transformation.
33:15One that keeps much of what was there before, but gently adds newer elements.
33:19The space we're in at the moment is where I socialize and where I cook and where I spend the day and spend time with friends.
33:27This is a really open space, whereas the other barn, the 19th century barn, has smaller, more intimate spaces.
33:35My library, corridors, spaces for sleeping, bathroom, and spaces that can be used as studios.
33:51So, in their nature, they're very, very different.
33:55The old buyer is, in fact, not one, but two barns.
33:59One built in the early 1900s, the other in the 1960s.
34:03The newer barn houses the main living space.
34:06A bright open kitchen, a generous dining area, and a calm, stripped-back lounge.
34:11The older L-shaped barn holds the bedrooms and a couple of quiet studio spaces.
34:17The RIBA judges admired the contrasts this project offered, where new and old materials and structures sit comfortably alongside each other.
34:26Nowhere more so than in the main living and working space.
34:31The roof is pretty much as it was.
34:35We reinforced it, visibly mended it, where we had to.
34:39There are still remnants of what is probably cow poo on the wall.
34:45There is a swallow's nest. There is hair. There are old nails.
34:47So all of this is still in the walls.
34:51The construction approach was deliberately as rough and ready as the original building itself.
34:57The doors came from Spain, I think, which took a long time.
35:02One of the doors didn't quite fit, so I rang the builder and a few hours later it was sorted.
35:07I think they shaved a little bit off the door frame, or the door, or either.
35:13I'm not going to ask.
35:15One of the greatest interventions here is what they've done to the front of the building.
35:21By day, it brings in soft light.
35:25By night, it glows.
35:28The facade that faces the courtyard is made from polycarbonate, so it looks like paper.
35:35It lets light in and brings light into the space.
35:39This insulated facade cost an eye-watering 17 grand.
35:44A unique expense in what was otherwise a cost-conscious home built for 360,000.
35:49Extraordinary for a project of this ambition.
35:51The budget was tight, but that led to most of the decisions we made about everything.
36:00I don't think there's anything where we thought we're going to spend more on this element.
36:04So we tested thoroughly the costs of different approaches, and that's how we made decisions.
36:10So now I wouldn't say it was to do with spending more on certain elements.
36:21The old buyer is masterful, not a glossy reinterpretation of raw rusticity.
36:28New materials and ideas have here been finely tuned to an appropriate level of humility.
36:34With that comes a gentle, brutal honesty.
36:37It's a cowshed made livable, not just through redesign, but in the refusal to lie about what it ever was.
36:45Why did I keep the swallow's nest? What would be the advantage of removing it?
36:49Like, I would take away a story of the building.
37:00We've explored five remarkable homes so far, but which will earn their place on the coveted shortlist?
37:07The house of wood shingle, a 60s bungalow wrapped head to toe in timber, part house, part hedgehog.
37:13House stead, four buildings, one family home, a place that rewrites the idea of what a house is.
37:21The orchards, barn on the outside, bond lair on the inside.
37:27London brute, a concrete wedge in a polite London postcode.
37:32Brutalism with a posh accent.
37:33The old buyer, a luminous barn conversion where the history is intact, swallow's nest and all.
37:46Joining me is the chair of the judges, David Conn.
37:50David, how many projects from this category have you selected for the shortlist?
37:53So there are two projects in this category.
37:55First being?
37:56London brute.
38:01Of all the ones we saw, probably it's the project that is most concerned with elegance.
38:08It's a very refined, calm experience to be there.
38:12And I think the abiding memory one would have of the visit is the relationship of these exquisitely proportioned rooms and gardens.
38:25That's, that's fantastic.
38:28Feels, yeah, feels all of that work has been worthwhile, thank you.
38:35So what's the second house that you've chosen?
38:37The second house is Kallstedt.
38:43Which is more than a house.
38:45It's a stead, it's an arrangement of buildings.
38:48Living, sleeping, service, quarter.
38:52Take away any one of the parts and it doesn't work.
38:55Yeah.
38:56It needs them all and the house is all of them together.
38:58A lot of people won't like it.
39:00A lot of people will look at that and say, I'm not going to live like that.
39:03Why should I walk in the rain just to go and put a log in the wood burner?
39:06It is an experimental project.
39:08I think it's a project which takes a lot of license with a lot of things and makes something utterly unique.
39:17Being shortlisted is fabulous.
39:19It's brilliant.
39:20Really, really pleased.
39:21Yeah, couldn't be, couldn't be more pleased.
39:23Fabulous.
39:24It's a great reward.
39:25Yeah.
39:27Thank you very much.
39:28So, Housestead and London Brute take their place on the shortlist.
39:34That's it.
39:35The shortlist is complete and we now have our seven finalists for the 2025 Royal Institute of British Architects House of the Year.
39:43In the running, we have Kirk and the Craig on the Isle of Harris and Hastings House on the south coast.
39:52There's the glorious Triangle House, the Agricultural Janks Barn, Amento and then Housestead and London Brute.
40:03The judges have a very difficult decision to make.
40:11So I'm walking up a hill to visit this year's winner of House of the Year.
40:15Now, I'm hoping the background is out of focus because it's important that you shouldn't be able to tell where I am.
40:22No, no, no. Come back here. Sorry. Not just yet.
40:26What I'll say is, the building's right in front of me and it looks extraordinary.
40:38It is this incredible home that takes the prize.
40:42Kirk and the Craig on the Isle of Harris in Scotland, built through sleep and struggle and storm by its owners Ailey and Jack.
40:51Hi.
40:52Yeah. Nice to meet you.
40:53Ailey, how are you?
40:54Hi.
40:55Good to see you both.
40:56Who, by the way, think I've just come to visit their shortlisted building.
41:01Nice to show you in person and actually be here.
41:03Yeah. Well, no, it's so important, isn't it, to actually make the effort to go and visit something and be there and experience it.
41:08I mean, it's made from that. It's made from everything around it. So good. It's so good.
41:12And by the way, congratulations on making the shortlist. So deserving.
41:16Oh, sorry, I forgot to say, also, congratulations on winning.
41:20No way.
41:21Yeah.
41:22Incredible.
41:23This is House of the Year 2025.
41:24Wow.
41:29Oh, my God.
41:30How about that?
41:31That's fantastic.
41:32Sorry, I couldn't not tell you.
41:33I couldn't not tell you.
41:35Congratulations.
41:36Oh, my God.
41:37Thank you very much.
41:38So good. So good.
41:39And so well deserved.
41:40Oh, my gosh.
41:41I can't believe it.
41:43Have we actually?
41:44Oh, my God.
41:45Yes, you have.
41:46That's why I've come to see you.
41:49Because it's so clever.
41:51Well, it's built from the landscape and they point out this rock and everything is moving
41:55around it.
41:56Yeah.
41:57Yeah.
42:00This house is crafted from the very rock that the island is made from.
42:04This is the local stone.
42:06Local stone.
42:07Yeah.
42:08And it's called?
42:09Louisian Nice.
42:10From the Isle of Lewis.
42:11Yeah.
42:12Louisian Nice.
42:13But that's one of the most ancient stones on the planet, isn't it?
42:16Yeah, it's incredibly old.
42:17And it's the reason why Harris is still here, because it's made of the hard rock.
42:23It makes your house a billion years old.
42:26Yeah, exactly.
42:27Louisian Nice, tough as anything, and exactly what you want between you and a howling Atlantic
42:35storm.
42:36That protects the house.
42:37They've got this to protect the occupants.
42:40I love this.
42:41This is your fantastic threshold.
42:44A glorious entry, a beautiful porch, very deep.
42:49Covered.
42:50Yeah.
42:51The shelter's really important.
42:52Why is that?
42:53It gets a bit windy.
42:58Nothing quite prepares you for the experience of walking in.
43:03This is unexpected, because you approach the building from the front, and it's like a
43:10pillbox.
43:11Yeah.
43:12It's like a very small.
43:13It's like a TARDIS in stone.
43:14Yes.
43:15It then reaches back.
43:16It thinks it's long and thin.
43:17It's not long and thin at all.
43:18I look down there, see the reflection.
43:20Yeah.
43:21There's the dining table, which is a lovely thing, because it's circular and welcoming.
43:25And then there's this view of just the rock on the hill.
43:28And what's clever here is the, it's like this floor on the outside.
43:33It's simply a continuation.
43:34Yeah.
43:35I think that's one of the hardest thing that we find in architecture is trying to allow,
43:40talk to people and say, that is a really good view, maybe the best view of the site,
43:44but don't just reveal it all straight away.
43:46Yeah.
43:47You know, layer through it, like you were saying, almost like a story.
43:50Architecture should be this revealing, this kind of staged act, if you like.
43:54I think it makes it quite creative.
43:56Yeah.
43:57And I'm very taken with it.
44:00So what was it particularly that won over the judges?
44:05Why did you choose this to be the winner?
44:07It was, I would say, really hard, but unanimous decision.
44:12To do a project like this in such a remote location on that budget required a partnership that is really admirable.
44:20And I don't think every couple would survive doing that kind of self-built project.
44:28What an amazing achievement against lots of odds.
44:31I mean, this project has been ambitious on so many levels.
44:34Not only with the detailing, the way it's actually made and crafted,
44:38but also the couple and their plan to build the house themselves.
44:41Such a good point, isn't it?
44:43Yeah.
44:44Often the bigger and the baggier something is, the less energy it has.
44:47And that you can find extraordinary energy in the small, perfectly made thing.
44:57It's this quiet, determined, palpable energy, born of hands that shape stone,
45:03of minds that listen to the land, that makes this building the house of the year 2025.
45:09That building speaks eloquently of this entire place.
45:17It speaks of people.
45:18It speaks of the story of a handful of them carrying stone, drying wood,
45:24and crafting with their knuckles and their fingers every tiny square inch of this building.
45:30This is the future, isn't it?
45:34This points somewhere else.
45:36This doesn't say, look at me.
45:38I've got a huge cantilever.
45:40This says, I have a role, and an important role here,
45:44in responding to people and to place.
45:47It's almost as though this is the building that this island and this part of the world was waiting for.
45:55It's beautiful.
45:56It's beautiful.
45:57It's beautiful.
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