I agree, grand designs folk are often obscenely wealthy. The really interesting projects are the ones where first time buyers decide that they won’t accept what’s out there and build what they want on a tight budget. However, they’re invariably middle class. As with many things it’s empowered people that are more proactive first, and then people with less power feel more able to say “look, they did it, I can too”.

Donald – Same point about value for money not being the same thing as low cost on design and construction. I will look into that patch of modernism.

Oh, and if you have any interest in London’s little patch of domestic modernism, check out Kerry Ave. and Valencia Rd., up the hill opposite Stanmore tube station. Absolutely fantastic – and hardly anyone knows about it.

And Alain de Botton’s Japanese subjects and the families featured in Grand Designs are hardly models for mass housing, because they all seemed to be wealthy people. One of the families on GD was a Dutch banker and his wife who was able to set up a whole architect’s practice to design their dream home in an old fiddle factory in South London, and they had a seven- or eight-figure budget (which came in handy when they used the wrong bricks for one outside wall, which may have led to a whole chunk of their interior being taken down and rebuilt). Mass housing can take some ideas from such projects but they have to be more realistic, and we do need more of it.