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.

Sarah and Dean Berry grew up on a council estate in Newport. Having moved away to London and made good, they have now returned home 17 years later and bought an 18th century folly - a castle perched on a hilltop. They not only plan to restore the folly to its former glory, but wrap a large modern extension around the original structure, with lots of glass to capitalise on the amazing views.

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.

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.

Every Englishman’s home is his castle but for Francis Shaw this is quite literally true. He and his wife, Karen, and their two young daughters, bought the ruins of a 14th Century castle in Yorkshire and took on the remarkable challenge of turning a pile of stones into a beautiful home. Surrounded by rolling green fields, the location is idyllic; however, the castle itself was little more than four crumbling walls.

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.

A Building Contractor and his wife who is a Nurse, build a large modern 6 bedroom house on a hill in Brighton. It has an amazing view and the owner has many ambitious design ideas including huge curved glass expansive windows. He lives next door and needs to renovate and sell the house on the other side of the plot. Everything starts out wonderfully, even though he has just had a double hip replacement. But other health problems loom, along with the housing market to deflate.

Eight years ago Alex and Cheryl Reay left London for a new life in the New Forest.

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