Expectation vs. Reality: Kevin McCloud Visits the Risky Brutalist House 2 Years On | Grand Designs

So what are you building here? A great, big, brutal concrete bunker. Big concrete bunker. You got it. Here. Yep. Why? Building in concrete is a really simple way, he says naively, to build a house. You're pouring concrete, building walls, building walls. You're not messing around with bricks and mortars. You're not doing any of that. It's about a very honest building built out of a really, truly 21st century material with an incredible history, but we're using it in its most modern way that it can be utilised, and we're doing it on a budget. It'll be made entirely out of concrete, and everything about this project screams experimentation. It's a single-storey dwelling, yet its foundations are on seven different levels. To construct the walls and roof, enormous formwork panels will be built on site, into which liquid concrete will be poured. Not the conventional stuff, but cutting-edge structural and insulated mixes. Once it's all set, the panels will be removed to reveal the bare concrete structure beneath. And that's how it'll remain, because there'll be no plaster or paint. Several deeply recessed windows will allow some shafts of all-important natural light to enter the otherwise gloomy structure. On the inside, a hallway will lead to the main living block, which incorporates a kitchen and a sunken dining area, with, next to it, an even lower living-room-cum-playroom, right next to the garage. Raised above the communal areas, there'll be bedrooms for each of the three children, a family bathroom, and a master bedroom block for Adrian and Megan. Even the new swimming pool in the garden will be cast from concrete. It's almost two-and-a-half years since I first met Adrian and Megan, who were preparing to build an experimental home entirely out of raw, exposed concrete, inspired by Adrian's childhood passion for skateparks in Scotland. No windows, no door. No doorbell, even. Looks like a fortress, doesn't it? Electricity substation. I'm going to go round the back. Oh, my giddy-ups! The back could not be more different. It's pretty epic. Megan's clearly worked wonders since I was last here. The buildings come on leaps and bounds. For people who like their brutalist concrete, this is on the brutal end of brutal. It's not the smoothest. No. It's not the most perfect. I never wanted it to be like that. What I wanted it to look like was something you say, has that been there 50 years? Or is it new? To look honest. Everything Mark is where we just try to create something. And it's ours. It's our rustic concrete box. Ooh, this is extreme. The interior is as gritty and grey as the façade. There's a mass and solidity and thickness to everything, to the lintels, to the piers, the walls, the depth of that skylight. Everything is chunkier. Yeah. Here forever. It's very, very nice. What I particularly like is the fact that you've got a chamfer at the top and the side, which means that sitting here, as I look up, I don't see an overhang. What I just see is sky through the top of the glazing, you know? Yeah. That is very, very neat. It gives you a huge view. There's a maximum contact with the world out there.