Unless you’ve been living under a (small, perfectly formed and much-loved) rock for the last 20 years, you’ve surely seen architect George Clarke on your TV screens. He’s the presenter of several property shows including The Restoration Man and Old House New Home, but perhaps most famously George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces, which showcases unconventional renovations in unusual spaces such as old boats, dilapidated caravans, aircrafts and woodland cabins. I’ve always been fascinated by George for a few reasons; fi rstly, he’s from the North East of England, like me. He also loves a renovation and is frequently outspoken about several issues relating to property. When we speak, George is in a voice over booth in West London, preparing series 13 of Amazing Spaces; ‘that’s my biggest brand,’ he tells me. ‘It’s so distinctive.’
George, I read that both of your grandads were builders, as were mine. Did they inspire you to become an architect?
“They definitely did. My Grandad Ted in particular was a big inspiration. He was a builder, a grafter, a maker, as well as being in construction. He built his own fishing trawler and became a captain, fishing in the North Sea for years. I spent a lot of time around him, watching him make and build things and he always told me to watch the world around me, to keep my head up. He also bought me some of my first books on building and construction when I was about 11 years old. I was 12 when I decided to become an architect. I suppose I could have been a builder, but I used to draw a lot. My dad was a bit of an amateur cartoonist, we’d draw together, and then I was on building sites with my grandad. So in some ways, when I think back, even though hardly anyone in my family had been to university and certainly no one had ever imagined being a ‘professional’ like an architect as they were all working class grafters, it does kind of make sense. Of course I didn’t really know what an architect was until I was about 12 or 13, but I wanted to draw buildings and be part of the building industry. Then I started reading books on architecture and that was it, I never wanted to be anything else.
That said, did I want to play football for Sunderland? 100%. And I would have definitely put that before becoming an architect when I was 11 years old. I love football and I played football a lot, but I was never at that level unfortunately. Football was a massive part of my life, I never missed a Sunderland game when I was a teenager. But then architecture is my life and I can be doing architecture – designing and drawing buildings – until I drop, but when players retire from football, what else is there? Instead of doing my A Levels, I left school when I was 16 to do an apprenticeship with an architect in the North East, working on small residential projects. It was a tiny team with one architect and two architectural technicians, I was their 16 year old apprentice. But I was working on real projects, real buildings from the age of 16.”
So, how does a lad from Sunderland become an architect?
During my degree at Newcastle University I had to work for a year, so I went to FaulknerBrowns, an architect in Newcastle and actually, they’re still going strong today. There I worked on swimming pools, university libraries, a huge range of projects. Then I graduated and went to London to do a second degree at University College London. There were five big name architects in the UK in the 1980s, everyone dreamt of working with them. They were Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, Sir Terry Farrell, Sir Nicholas Grimshaw and Michael Hopkins. I got a job working with Sir Terry Farrell, he’s one of the most notable architects and urban designers of our time. We worked on airports, transportation centres, skyscrapers, commercial buildings. I worked in Hong Kong for nearly a year, working on railway stations linking Hong Kong with China and other urban master planning schemes for places all over the world. It was a massively diverse career but then I set up my own practise in 2000 to focus predominantly on residential work.
did I want to play football for Sunderland? 100%. And I would have definitely put that before becoming an architect
I never thought of myself as being entrepreneurial at the time, I think you just need to be; you sort of become that by default when you open your own business. I was just 22 years old then and I had a building company not long after that, so we’d design and build homes for people. I went into property development after that. Maybe I’m just a control freak, I love being my own boss. When you make that step to be your own boss at a young age… I mean, I’m unemployable now. No body would give me job!”
How did you find yourself on TV?
“I had my own practice and at the same time I was teaching architecture at Newcastle University. I was asked to do research for the university, but I couldn’t really do it because I was busy and I’d just become a dad for the first time, I was as busy as anything. Someone at the university suggested that I write a book instead, because if you get a book published, then that counts as research. So I went to get a literary agent in London, I remember meeting her on a Thursday at 10am, and I signed for her with an idea to write book a some point. Then she called me on the Monday to ask if I’d ever thought about doing TV. As it turns out, she was both a literary agent and a broadcasting agent. I did a screen test the next day and got the job. It’s been an unusual career path I suppose! But then I guess if you asked Jamie Oliver while he was training to be a chef at the River Cafe if he could see himself in the position he’s in now, he would never have dreamt of it while working like mad in a kitchen as a teenager. Opportunities come along and you make decisions on whether or not to take them.”
There’ve been many series over the last 20 years, which are you most proud of?
Amazing Spaces is my longest running series, it’s been around for 12 years and series 13 is underway. To have that longevity and have a series be so successful for so long is incredible. It’s massively unique, there’s nothing quite like it. I’m here today recording the voice overs and for the first time I’m seeing some of the things that the team have been off to film without me. It comes up here on the screen and I’m like ‘what is that? That’s incredible, show me again, play it back’. So if I’m still reacting to that after 13 series, then there’s still life in it.”
For you, what makes a home?
“The people. A house at the end of the day is bricks and motar, sections of timber. What makes a home is the people and what happens within it. My home feels like a nice home because it’s got all of the things I love in it, my kids come back from uni and school, that’s what makes it special and unique and personal. Charm and character are really important things, if I go into a house that feels a bit sterile and anonymous, I don’t connect with it as well. You can feel it, when you’re in a home. It’s also a beautiful piece of design and it’s loved; even if I don’t meet the family who live there, as I’m walking around I get a sense of who they are and what their tastes are. That makes me sound really nosey! I get the place because of the people. Otherwise it’s just another piece of architecture, another object. I’ve recently written a kids book in the Little Experts series on this subject for six to nine year olds, it’s called ‘How To Build A Home’. In the intro I tell the story about when I was a kid and I’d get confused because people would say ‘come to my house’ or ‘I’m going home’ and I’d be like, what’s the difference? Why do we have two words for this? A house is the physical product of construction; the bricks, cement, timber and glass. A home is what people bring to it, that’s what makes it special, unique and personable.”
Do you have a view on people building new homes as opposed to renovating old ones?
“This is a big big one for me. I love old buildings, I’ve been making television for 20 years and I’ve never done anything on a new build house on TV. You might not have noticed that, but it’s all been renovations, conversions, recycling and refurbishing, repurposing. I’ll always be an advocate for retro fits and restoration, because they’ve got a story to tell, they’re more sustainable and ecological because you are recycling an old building. They’ve got all of that embodied energy in them. If you can breathe new life into it and give it another few hundred years, that’s always going to be a good thing.
At the same time, I’m not against new builds because we need them. Even if you did up every old building that we’ve got in the UK and also filled every empty building that we’ve got in the UK, it still couldn’t solve the housing crisis. People get upset about new builds when the quality just isn’t good enough. Let’s think about lovely Georgian houses that were built back in the day, or even some of the beautiful Edwardian and Victorian houses that you’ll see around the UK. A lot of us think that Georgian crescents and streets were built by the landed gentry of the day, they weren’t. They were built by speculative developers, as new builds are today, but the quality was far superior.
There’s lots of land in the UK that could be built on. Believe me, I love the countryside more than anyone, but there’s some pretty shabby land out there that’s just growing grass that could have a better purpose. I’m a firm believer in protecting our beautiful countryside but I’m not against new build development. I’m against bad new built development and ugly homes. I just don’t understand why we’re not designing and building really beautiful streets. We were doing it hundreds of years ago, now it’s all Noddy box houses thrown all over the countryside in some random, scattered fashion, built too quickly, not built by skilled people so the standards aren’t high enough. I’m not saying this is every developer before I get myself into trouble but architectural standards are definitely not good enough on mass house building. Often it’s just about building as much as possible, as quickly as possible to make as much money as possible. It’s not good enough. Every single town that’s been built in this country was built on green land – London was a river with greenery on either side of it. We need to build. We’ve only built on 8% of our land mass here in the UK – what if we built on 12% and we did it really well, that might solve the housing crisis. First and foremost, let’s repurpose and recycle what we’ve got, then let’s build on brown field sites in the right places that won’t destroy any genuinely beautiful countryside. Let’s build good, medium density areas that make the most of the land. Developers just want to build the same two story houses that look the same all across the country, then build the roads to connect them all; it’s not very clever at all.
Speaking of all this, I did a post on Instagram a few months ago, criticising a new build housing estate and I got a barrage of abuse. “These are people’s homes, you’re a snob,” was the response. I had the newspapers calling me up asking how I feel about being called a middle class snob. I’m just a working class lad, actually. I wasn’t judging their homes, if anything I was on their side. It’s the responsibility of developers and house builders to build better quality products for the people who are buying them. We should be raising the standards of architectural design and house building so the people who buy them can live better and improve the built environment. We all share that, we all see and experience it, so it should be the best.”
What advice would you give to someone considering a renovation?
“Obviously I’m going to say, get a good architect, that’s a predictable answer. What is a good architect? Someone who understands the brief and gives the client what they want – gives them more than they expected. At the risk of sounding like the middle class snob, you should never be picking anything based on price. Yes, it’s got to be affordable, but going for the cheapest thing just by implication, that’s never the best strategy. You’ll probably be disappointed.
I’ll always be an advocate for retro fits and restoration, they’ve got a story to tell
Also, make as many design decisions as you can before you start. A lot of people think they can decide on details later, even some architects will suggest that. It’s the simplest thing in the world, you’ve got to make the decision anyway, make it early. The faster you make it and the more that decision is included into the drawings and the spec, and maybe even ordered in advance – the less stressful your build will be. On my own projects I specify virtually everything before I even begin. That might sound a bit OCD and staggeringly organised but it gives me peace of mind and then everyone just knows what they’re doing. There’s something about the building game that can be a bit ad hoc and disorganised.”
What does your amazing space look like?
“I’ve got a garden studio, which is a nice little hidden bolthole. I’ve also got my cabin up in the Lake District. Actually, that’s not so hidden, because it was on TV. In the final episode of first series of Amazing Spaces, we launched my renovated caravan, which I’d bought for £300. I got 10 years out of that. Then on the 10th anniversary of Amazing Spaces, we decided to say goodbye to it; it was recycled and we designed and built a new eco cabin on the same site during series 11. The caravan was on a National Trust site and the National Trust want to be zero carbon by 2030, so I designed a replacement to show how sustainable and ecological it could be compared to the caravan. I love it. I get in the car, I leave London, drive for five hours to the Lake District. I love being in the mountains and I turn up to my very very simple 30ft x 9ft structure. It’s an arts and crafts inspired cabin with stained glass windows, a vaulted ceiling inside and William Morris detailing. There’s no TV, just books and an ethanol fire; it’s my hideaway and I love being in the Lakes.”
Is there one amazing space from the series that stands out?
“That’s impossible for me to answer. If I was making a series that was just about doing up houses, you’d probably be able to pick out your favourite. But Amazing Spaces is so diverse, how can I choose between someone turning an airplane cockpit into an amazing space over someone who’s built a bunker underground or a treehouse, or a camper van, turned a military truck into an amazing space? But to be honest, that is the beauty of the series, and that’s why it’s been around for so long. I genuinely couldn’t give you my favourite. And I know the series inspires people. The small space revolution was just beginning when we stared the series in 2012. These places were already out there, so we didn’t start this, but we’ve certainly encouraged it. We’ve just filmed a young lad called Eli Baxter, he’s 17 year old and he’s back with his second amazing space in this next series. We filmed his first one last time when he was 16 but he was just three years old when I started making Amazing Spaces. That makes me feel really old.”
You campaign on a lot of important issues, do you feel like you have a responsibility to shine a light on certain things?
“No, not really. The word ‘responsibility’ is a bit heavy, but I suppose I feel like someone needs to speak up sometimes. In 2011 I did this big campaign about empty homes. I couldn’t understand why we have so many in the UK when we’ve got over a million people on the housing waiting list. Why aren’t we building more genuinely affordable homes for social rent? More recently I talk about the housing crisis, and I work with young kids. I launched an educational charity called Mobie with the aim of inspiring young kids to reshape the homes and communities of the future. So no, I don’t view it as a responsibility, but it’s certainly a passion.”
What do you do in your downtime?
“I love to read and I try to switch off from technology because I’m not a big fan of it. I take a lot of holidays. From Monday to Friday I’m living in a hotel, living out of a suitcase. But when I get home for the weekend I switch off from everything. I’m also one of those people that finishes a holiday and needs to know when the next one is. I’ve even planned my holiday for next summer. It’s a privilege doing this job and I have no time to get bored!”
