They sat down with the ABC to discuss good \u2014 and bad \u2014 design, and what makes a house a home.<\/p>\n
‘We build what we want to be’<\/p>\n
Ask McCloud which house style best suits his personality, and the answer might surprise you.<\/p>\n
“In my head, my home is small. It is minimal, it is clean, and it is fabulous. It’s all the things I’m not,” he says.<\/p>\n
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Comedian and presenter Tim Ross has had a lifelong love for architecture and design. (Photographer: Caroline McCredie)<\/p>\n
“We don’t just build who we are. We build what we want to be, so I’m going to take this opportunity to do something that is modest, super-efficient, green, small and beautiful.<\/p>\n
Stream shows about design on ABC iview<\/a><\/p>\n Whether it’s the bold and daring designs of Grand Designs Transformation, the dream homes of Grand Designs Australia or great Australian architecture in Designing a Legacy, catch all these and more on ABC iview.<\/p>\n “And it will only have one working toilet.” (We’ll come back to the issue of toilets later.)<\/p>\n Ross says he’s best suited to the modernist home he currently lives in<\/a>, but concedes he’s probably more like a terrace house “that’s sometimes darker than I’d like it to be”.<\/p>\n “Is that too dark? Probably! Let’s go with the modernist house,” he says.<\/p>\n What would be its standout feature?<\/p>\n “They talk about how cats find the best places in a house. I’d like to think that my house would have plenty of places for cats to find the best place.<\/p>\n Kevin McCloud has been the host of Grand Designs for 25 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Somewhere you can catch the northern sun on a winter’s day and fill your heart with the warmth. Simple things in houses are important.”<\/p>\n What does smart design look like?<\/p>\n Exceptional design can be found in the unlikeliest places and, according to McCloud, nothing beats the “simplicity and elegance” of a paperclip.<\/p>\n “One piece of wire \u2014 I love the beauty of that,” he says of the stationery staple first patented in 1901.<\/p>\n Ross nominates the Splayd, an all in-one knife, spoon and fork created by William McArthur in Sydney in the 1940s.<\/p>\n “It’s the perfect item for eating lasagne,” he says of the piece of cutlery that has had five million sales globally, according to the company website.<\/p>\n The Splayd was a popular inclusion on wedding registries.\u00a0 (Supplied: Karyn Unwin)<\/p>\n “Last night, I had a slice of pav on a plate while standing around talking to someone at a party \u2026 it’s the perfect, practical piece of design.”<\/p>\n Ross and McCloud also share an appreciation for magnets, Velcro catcher mitts and the ingenuity of the egg cracker, which McCloud says can turn a “miserable breakfast trying to deal with the egg and its shell into a beautiful time”.<\/p>\n “It makes this perfect circular crack at the top of the boiled egg”, he says of the German invention.<\/p>\n “It’s stuff like that we need more of.”<\/p>\n What makes a house a home?<\/p>\n When it comes to poor design choices, it’s the common idea that bigger is always better when building a home that frustrates McCloud.<\/p>\n “We’ve got to stop building big houses,” he says.<\/p>\n Are new homes too big? Kevin McCloud says they are and that it’s a problem.\u00a0 (ABC News: John Gunn)<\/p>\n “They’re hugely wasteful of materials \u2014 their carbon footprint is ridiculous \u2014 they cost a fortune to run, to heat and to cool, and to fill with furniture that we don’t want.”<\/p>\n He says space is not a “physical reality that you can measure with a ruler”, but a concept.<\/p>\n “It’s a view of the heavens. It’s that piece of glass in your ceiling above [the] shower, where you can look up and see the stars or the moon.<\/p>\n “Space is having that contact with the outside world, having that view through to something green, if you’re lucky, or even just people in the street [and your] neighbours.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Having a building which puts you in contact with other people and allows communities to flourish, as opposed to isolating individuals.”<\/p>\n Captain Kelly’s Cottage on Bruny Island has a picture perfect view of its own private bay. (Supplied: Trevor Mein)<\/p>\n And the sudden proliferation of bathrooms and toilets in modern homes has not gone unnoticed by Ross, who doesn’t understand why people need “a million bathrooms”.<\/p>\n “Not every one of your kids needs an en suite,” he says.<\/p>\n “I think there’s something important about learning how to line up and wait to have a shower \u2026 for our emotional regulation.<\/p>\n “Most people seem to want to put in six or eight [toilets],” McCloud says. “Certainly, double the number of inhabitants in the building.”<\/p>\n As of 2024, the most desirable home in Australia according to Realestate.com.au is a house with four bedrooms and two bathrooms.\u00a0<\/p>\n Perhaps not as many as double the occupants, but more than the standard Australian home built during the post-war period, when occupants were expected to share one bathroom and, if they were lucky, an extra toilet located outside.<\/p>\n ‘The concerns of ghosts’<\/p>\n Australia is in the midst of a housing crisis, fuelled in part by a lack of affordable housing.<\/p>\n In 2024, it was estimated that 240,000 homes a year<\/a> would need to be built to meet the National Housing Accord target of 1.2 million well-located homes by 2029.<\/p>\n But where exactly this housing will be built has become a sticking point. In Victoria, the state government’s plans for high-rise apartment developments<\/a> centred around transport hubs across Melbourne’s suburbs have been met with resistance from some locals.<\/a><\/p>\n Are apartments the answer to Australia’s lack of affordable housing? (ABC: John Gunn)<\/p>\n “Quite often the reason we don’t go up is because of the grievances of people in their 70s and 80s,” says Ross.<\/p>\n “By the time the building’s finished, they like it and then they’re dead and so we’re living with the concerns of ghosts. And that’s problematic.<\/p>\n “That’s a very different situation from destroying heritage areas, which I simply don’t agree with.”<\/p>\n Imagination is key to conserving our heritage, and building places people want to live in, says McCloud.<\/p>\n “The difficulty with planning the built environment is it’s not a series of little components that you can tinker with.<\/p>\n “The best planning laws, design guides, local design guidance and neighbourhood plans, they all come about as a result of people getting together and being imaginative. Great architects, designers, planners\u2026” he says.<\/p>\n Kevin McCloud and Tim Ross have a shared obsession for architecture and design. (Supplied: Modernister Films)<\/p>\n “Once you’ve enshrined it you can’t start picking [planning laws] apart because the whole thing crumbles from it, rather like an edifice.”<\/p>\n![\"Kevin](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/120124fa6a33da18713ac789df9f9a11.jpeg\")
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