S3 Ep 10 – 66 Portland Place. Reimagining an Icon

Tim and Kevin pull on their hard hats for a tour of 66 Portland Place, the striking 1934 London home of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Chair of the RIBA Board of Trustees Jack Pringle guides them through the building as it’s being stripped back, restored and reimagined as a new, more w…

S3 Ep 9 – BONUS CHAT - The Ernő Goldfinger Legacy

It’s a bonus episode with Pippa Goldfinger, especially curated by Kevin for you.  Works best if you listen to the main episode first - Series 3, Episode 9.    To view images from this episode, head to our Instagram page - @big_design_adventure And be sure to follow Tim Ross (@modernister) and Ke…

S3 Ep 9 – The Ernő Goldfinger Legacy

Tim and Kevin head to West London to borrow the keys to an apartment in Trellick Tower, the iconic Brutalist apartment block designed by Hungarian émigré architect Ernő Goldfinger — an absolute banger of an example of social housing. Joining them on the sofa is Ernő’s granddaughter, Pippa, who sha…

S3 Ep 8 - “Don’t knock the bloody thing down!”

This week Kev drags a slightly confused Tim to Leigh, outside Manchester, to explore Leigh Spinners Mill, a vast former cotton mill. He’s less confused when he finds out it’s been given an extraordinary new life as a thriving community hub. Built in 1913 for the Horrocks family, the mill is a remi…

S3 Ep 7 – Hotel Motel

What makes a well-designed hotel? This listener question set off a chain of events that created a cavalcade of hot takes, extreme rants about the state of modern hotels, a potted history of motels, a small-scale therapy session about the lettering on bottles in hotel bathrooms, a revelation about …

S3 Ep 6 - Robin and Lucienne Day

Robin and Lucienne Day, were the most distinguished British designers of the post war period. Their designs were woven into everyday life. Robin's revolutionary polypropylene chair became one of the most widely used chairs in history, while Lucienne's vibrant textile designs helped define the opti…

S3 Ep 5 – Sam Neill – Acting, Architecture and Wine

Earlier this year, Sam Neill kindly agreed to join us on the podcast. The plan was to wait until Kevin was back in Australia so we could all sit down together, unfortunately we couldn’t make the dates align. Last week, Tim went back through his archives and rediscovered a conversation the two of t…

S3 Ep 4 – The crack is where the light gets in – The Very Reverend John Witcombe – Coventry Cathedral

On the night of 14 November 1940, nearly 500 Luftwaffe bombers descended on Coventry. Over the next 11 hours, they dropped more than 500 tonnes of high explosives and around 30,000 incendiary bombs on the city. By morning, 568 people had been killed, around 850 seriously injured and 43,000 homes da…

S3 Ep 3 - Morag Myerscough Luke Morgan Moving to the Country

Tim and Kevin head into the English countryside to visit acclaimed artist Morag Myerscough and artist-musician Luke Morgan, who traded the excitement of inner-city London for an unloved modernist house, an ambitious renovation and a completely different way of living. Five years into the renovatio…

S3 Ep 2 - Peter Barber The Housing Crisis Hero

Can architecture help solve the housing crisis? Acclaimed London architect Peter Barber thinks it can, and he's proving it one street at a time. Tim and Kevin head to London to meet one of Britain's most admired architects, whose award-winning work is rethinking what social and affordable housing …