15 and a half Peckham House

[Tarbicus]

Just finished watching a great episode of Grand Designs, where cameras follow people building their own homes. Very inspiring and thought I'd just pass this on, as the end result took my breathe away, epsecially as I live not far from where the house was built.

There are a lot of dross house programmes on TV here, but this is worth watching.

A young couple, he's a filmmaker/actor, she's a dance teacher, so they can't get a mortgage. Fed up, they have an idea; his dad offers to mortgage his own home for them, they buy what's essentially a driveway between two houses, their friends help out. They have no proper building experience, but he's been an inventor all his life, so....

From this

To this

One influence was a Roman villa as they weren't allowed to put windows on the sides of the house. The top skylight opens and closes to let the air in, which he invented.

Here's a newspaper article:
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/sto ... 20,00.html

And here's the website for the house itself, where you can download 90 minutes worth of programme (more than the TV show I just watched)
http://www.peckhamhouse.com/

Just thought I'd share it.

Oh yeah, the mortgage brokers and banks wanted to throw money at them after it was finished.