The ever-asprirational Grand Designs returns this week, with eight families setting out on the adventure of building their own homes, all under the watchful eye of Kevin McCloud. After 11 years of presenting the series, he is as intense, enthusiastic and passionate as ever about architecture.

Would you say the recession has had an impact on this series of Grand Designs?
I can’t say that it has on any of the houses in this series. I think some projects slowed up a little bit, but that was more of a blip to do with the problems of the supply of money in the market a year ago. Although it’s fair to say that some of the projects which we’re filming now, for transmission next year and the year after, are projects which are being created in a recession, and therefore are perhaps cleverer and wiser.

Tell us about this week’s programme...
It’s a Sixties bungalow which a designer and an artist are coating in yoghurt and charred wood. They’re also constructing a tower extension wrapped in agricultural cladding.

Yoghurt and charred wood…?
It’s a way of ageing the building and helping it to blend into the woodland setting. The entire project is a very sustainable reworking and reinstallation of an old bungalow, which makes it much more efficient for the 21st century. The principal idea is recycling, remodeling and re-using, which is of course a big part of what sustainable culture is about.

What’s your favourite ever building featured in Grand Designs?
There are probably a good two dozen projects that we’ve filmed over the years that I’ve a real fondness for. One of my favourites is the pair of glass and timber houses in Dulwich, south London, which we revisit in this series.

And what’s your favourite building of all time?
Well, one of them is the Royal Festival Hall in London. I have an incredibly fond attachment to that building. It’s had a major overhaul, involving the complete gutting of the auditorium, which I was nervous about, but it’s been so lovingly and sensitively done you would not know. I’ve been going there for years — I’ve always used it a lot for meetings, and years ago, when I sang in a choir, I even performed in it.

And what are your carbuncles?
I’m particularly troubled by the number of high-rise buildings that have been going up in London. I’m not a fan of the Gillette electric shaver [the Strata building] in Elephant and Castle, or the Shard at London Bridge, either. I find them crude. It’s as though if you want to build something really big, you need an idea that is so simple it’s childlike. I love complexity, and I love context.

By Martina Fowler