Kevin McCloud

after 23 years following the UK’s most unusual and ambitious home projects, the presenter and international face of Grand Designs, Kevin McCloud, is as passionate as ever about design, if not quite so on board with the Aussie real estate obsession.

“Yeah, ‘How big is your plot? How much’d you pay for that?’,” he laughs. “It’s like asking how much people earn! I’m not very good on the ‘p’ word [property]. I quite like the ‘a’ word [architecture] and the ‘e’ word [engineering]. The ‘p’ word is so focused on one issue — money, value.”

Of course, every country has its own rules, he concedes, confiding he once asked a Sámi reindeer herder in Lapland how many reindeer he had. “He just looked at me and went silent. The translator