Monstrous is one of the politer ways it has been described. Some have compared it to a civic centre, a Bond villain’s lair or a Holiday Inn.
But everyone agrees that Grand Designs’ latest talking-point has got people talking.
Made from 34 zinc-clad shards jutting over seven metres high into the Devon sky, the structure in last week’s opening episode of the latest series is 70 metres long and consists of 300 timber beams and triple-glazed glass units, each weighing up to a ton.
What is arguably Grand Designs’ most audacious project to date has divided opinion. While some have praised it, others are scornful about a building that ended up costing its wealthy owners £2.5 million and from the outside resembles, in Kevin McCloud’s words, ‘a giant zinc monster’
What’s more, it went almost £2 million over budget and took more than three years longer than expected to complete.
By halfway through the episode, viewers were fully expecting the building in question — Hux Shard — to be another of the Channel 4 programme’s overly ambitious projects, destined to fail and in the process break up the stressed couple whose hare-brained idea it had been.
Come the final advert break, they could be forgiven for expecting presenter Kevin McCloud to return for his last visit to an abandoned heap of rubble on site.
But Hux Shard hasn’t played out to the predicted narrative. The 6,000 sq ft sculptural home, said to have been created to mimic the Dartmoor tors, has been completed.
Its owners, 37-year-old tax consultant Joe Priday and his wife Claire, 42, a marketing executive, have just moved in — their children Jasmine, ten; Evan, five; and three-year-old Rory delighting in the ‘racetrack’ 229ft-long corridor that runs through the house.
The unusual home, which Kevin McCloud likened to a 'spaceship' featured an open plan living area as well as a huge gym and games room
With a £125,000 kitchen, a 6ft-wide front door that opens with facial recognition, LED lights embedded in the walls and a floor suspended off the ground, the four-bedroom home is as high-tech inside as it is mindboggling outside.
And Joe, who had aspired to create ‘one of the best homes on the planet’, is delighted.
‘I am completely and utterly satisfied — and that’s quite rare for me,’ he said.
But what is arguably Grand Designs’ most audacious project to date has divided opinion. While some have praised it, others are scornful about a building that ended up costing its wealthy owners £2.5 million and from the outside resembles, in Kevin McCloud’s words, ‘a giant zinc monster’.
Among the verdicts on social media were ‘staggering vanity project’ and ‘sickening’, while Joe, whose six expensive cars in the garage provided insurance lest he run out of money (he didn’t), was described as ‘smug and unlikeable’, content to ‘throw’ cash at an ostentatious house with scant regard for those who can’t afford to get on the property ladder at all.
As one viewer put it: ‘At least four or five families could have built more-than-adequate, sustainable houses on that plot and all got to enjoy the views.’
So how was Hux Shard — atop a hill, overlooking rolling countryside near the village of Pinhoe on the outskirts of Exeter, within metres of other ordinary homes — granted planning permission, when getting the go-ahead to build rural homes is usually as hard as Dartmoor granite?
And what on earth do the neighbours think?
Hux Shard sits behind a tall fence with a newly planted beech hedge on a narrow lane. Only the points of the roof can be seen from the road, but neighbours on the same side of the road can see the whole of it from their gardens.
Opinion is mixed in this genteel community of several homes within a stone’s throw of the property — and some people spoke to the Mail on condition of anonymity, so as not to fall out with the new residents.
One described it as ‘a bit of an eyesore’, while a second, whose view of the countryside has been blocked by the shards, was admirably philosophical: ‘I don’t want to sound like Prince Charles, not liking modern buildings.
‘Maybe in 50 years’ time people will drive past and say “Oh, what a wonderful building”. I’m trying to be kind but our view was more attractive before that structure went up. I would prefer it wasn’t there.
‘Art is a matter of taste and I’m not sure it’s to my taste.’
Then again, Joe, a former director of a wealth management company who wanted the house to have the wow factor of a collectable Ferrari, is nobody’s idea of an average homeowner.
He has made money from advising people how to invest, spotting opportunities in unlikely places.
Quiet-spoken Claire, who admits she is ‘not as ambitious’ as her husband, says her main ambition is ‘to keep the family unit happy and alive, really, most days’.
The couple bought a bungalow next door to their current house in 2013 and paid £65,000 for the adjoining paddock. Shortly afterwards they applied for planning permission to build there, not thinking for a second it would be granted. It is notoriously difficult to obtain permission to build new rural homes — and at the time their local authority, East Devon District Council, was being criticised for allowing developers to build new housing estates in countryside locations.
But a loophole in the National Planning
