Ian and Sophie Cooper met at university and have since spent their time together enjoying life in London. Ian works as a marketing consultant in telecoms and Sophie is a sales manager for a fashion firm. Both are passionate about design.

They’ve done the usual thing of renovating flats and moving on... but three years ago they realised they wanted a different kind of life in a different kind of building.

Inspired by an illustration on a yoghurt pot, Chris Ostwald decides to build a New England-style water mill in the Chilterns, on a hill and nowhere near any water.

Kevin McCloud follows the progress of architect Richard Hawkes and wife Sophie, who are moving from London to the Kent countryside to build a hi-tech eco-friendly house with room to grow their own food. Richard also wants their new home to blend effortlessly into the surrounding countryside, concealed beneath a huge arch of clay tiles covered with earth and planted with grass

Daren Howarth and Adi Nortje are keen to build an earth-sheltered home from recycled materials in Brittany. The house is a very low tech one, mainly constructed from old car tyres.

Dairy farmer Andrew Ainslie and his artist wife Meryl, who run a gallery on their farm, build a modern barn-style farmhouse on their 700 acre farm in the rolling chalk hills of Wiltshire.

Mimi De Costa and her husband Andre, a doctor, had spent years looking for a plot of land when they came across a bungalow in Kent.

The original bungalow

They bought it for the site - 12 acres of organic pasture and woodland - and started to plan a new home for their sons, Sean and Tye, that would suit a lower impact way of living.

But what they're building isn’t going to be a reproduction of the bungalow. It's a squarish, modular building, with glass walls from floor to ceiling. The outside of the building is clad in cedar that will go grey to match the surrounding oak trees.

The idea is that by prefabricating most of the house it should be quicker and easier to put together on site. But although it will be precision made, it isn’t a kit house.

Barry Surtees wants to build a modern mansion for his family in Brighton, but he is soon battling with escalating material costs, complaining neighbours and finally a heart attack.

Kevin returns to see how Daren Howarth and Adi Nortje's project has fared four years after they decided to build an earth-sheltered home in Brittany.

Kevin returns to the Weald of Kent and one of the most innovative houses ever featured on Grand Designs: a highly experimental arch-shaped home built from clay tiles.

Kevin McCloud revisits a couple who took on the task of constructing a sustainable house in the Kent countryside. Mimi da Costa managed the project despite a lack of experience, while her husband worked, and intended to have it completed in 16 weeks. But as the build threatened to drag on for months it became unclear whether their home would succeed in blending in and providing them with a greener lifestyle.

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