Caroline and Piers start the season in Portugal, where a fully automated home, a serpentine design, an X-shaped stunner and a woodland property await
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They begin in California, viewing a property built from the wings and tail fins of a Boeing 747. In Arizona, the pair stay in a modern house with an innovative take on an ancient technique of absorbing the heat during the day and releasing it at night. In New Zealand, Caroline and Piers view a house camouflaged using cedar cladding, while their last stop takes them to a hexagonal alpine chalet with a steel chimney core that anchors it to the mountain.
2017 • Design
Architect Piers Taylor and actress Caroline Quentin explore unusual homes built in or near areas of forest. After trips to properties near Madrid and the Catskill Mountains in New York State, they arrive in Piha, New Zealand, to a house built within an indigenous forest of pohutukawa trees. Navigating very strict environmental laws, this wooden-cladded and glass-roofed property mimics the branches of the surrounding trees, while its huge sliding glass walls open up to allow the surrounding forest to become an intrinsic part of the house itself.
2017 • Design
Piers Taylor and Caroline Quentin visit an island in Norway, spending two days in a house built on a footprint of just 100 square metres. In Spain, the pair head to a home built into a steep cliff face overlooking the Mediterranean, featuring a cantilevered terrace offering maximum sea views and a swimming pool as well as an unusual tiled roof. After viewing a house in New Zealand crafted from two separate wooden cladded structures, the duo explore a home in Canada inspired by two ships in dry dock, designed to peer over the coast, allowing the sea to pass underneath.
2017 • Design
Piers Taylor and Caroline Quentin explore unusual homes built underground. In Greece, they view a house hidden beneath the landscape that still boasts stunning sea views. In the Swiss Alps, they visit a house made so invisible it has to be accessed via a tunnel. Next it's over to New Zealand's South Island to a house built underground to soften its impact on the landscape as well as withstand the threat of earthquakes, before the pair inspects a Dutch house created by deep excavation, which features a huge, light-filled open-plan living space.
2017 • Design
In Switzerland, Piers and Caroline tour a modern chalet, a concrete retreat, an S-shaped home and a house built for it's owner's classic cars
2018 • Design
Picking up the story of design from the drab days of the late 70s, the final episode tracks the explosion of wild creativity that defined the 'designer decades' of the 80s and early 90s. By addressing wants rather than needs and allying themselves to the blatant consumerism of 'retail culture' designers emerged from the backrooms to claim a starring role in the shaping of modern life.
S1E5 • The Genius of Design • 2010 • Design
Piers and Caroline travel to Norway to see a charming family cottage, a summer house built around a rock, a daring concrete home and a rugged retreat.
S2E7 • The World's Most Extraordinary Homes • 2019 • Design
From the simple, to the profound to the life changing, see how design ideas and solutions are making a difference in the lives of millions around the world.
S1E2 • Design with the Other 90 Percent • 2011 • Design
What do you get when you combine a passion for tiny-house living with cutting-edge green technology? Designer Graham Hill converts a small shed in Hawaii into the ultimate eco-friendly tiny house and a blueprint for sustainable home design.
Bright Now • 2019 • Design
The centuries-old tradition of folding two-dimensional paper into three-dimensional shapes is inspiring a scientific revolution. The rules of folding are at the heart of many natural phenomena, from how leaves blossom to how beetles fly. But now, engineers and designers are applying its principles to reshape the world around us—and even within us, designing new drugs, micro-robots, and future space missions. With this burgeoning field of origami-inspired-design, the question is: can the mathematics of origami be boiled down to one elegant algorithm—a fail-proof guidebook to make any object out of a flat surface, just by folding? And if so, what would that mean for the future of design? Explore the high-tech future of this age-old art as NOVA unfolds “The Origami Revolution.”