Grand Designs: New Zealand on ABC – With a passion for challenging structures, civil engineer Charles Webster has always dreamt of building his own home. He purchased a beautiful 10-acre site on a promontory, west of the Coromandel.
The idea was to build a home but life got in his way so he put the whole idea on hold.
A few years later, around the same time his family home in Herne Bay was sold, Charles met and married kindergarten teacher Yvonne. With his quarter share of the family home, Charles decided to go ahead with building in the Coromandel.
With Yvonne by his side and a healthy budget, Charles has had free rein to create an ambitious design – one based on a desert sand dune.
While Charles relishes the challenges the unconventional geometry presents, his architect says that it is one of the most demanding projects he has ever tackled – mostly because it has almost no straight lines.
However, the big question remains, will Charles – the man who loves nothing more than a technical engineering challenge and who has always dreamt of building his own house – fall so in love with the process of creating the perfect building and refining his wonderfully wild vision – that he will never actually manage to finish it?
Production credit: Based on the format “Grand Designs” devised by Talkback Thames, a Fremantle Media company.
Grand Designs: New Zealand – Final Episode – Thursday 15 May, 2023 at 9:00pm on ABC and ABC iview
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