Grand Designs: House of the Year

Kevin McCloud is joined by architect Damion Burrows and conservation architect Natasha Huq to review the houses in the running for the 2025 Royal Institute of British Architects House of the Year award. The first six include up are a jewel-like home on a remote Hebridean island, a retreat carved into rock on the Cornish cliffs and a London home built behind a butcher's shop, where everything must be hauled through a one-metre alleyway.

On the Kent coast, a contemporary home makes the beach itself part of everyday life, blending work with an endless sense of escape. In east London, a landlocked plot is transformed into a sun-filled sanctuary, precisely angled to catch every ray while shutting out the city around it. In suburban Surrey, a burst of tropical colour, terracotta and greenery conjures the Caribbean. In London, a calm retreat draws on Japanese traditions, with timber frames and courtyards that blur the line between house and garden. In Wiltshire, soaring rooflines stretch outwards to frame vast views of cathedral spires and meadows. California comes to south London in the form of a dazzling American-style glass and steel home. Each house offers an experience like no other. But only the best will earn a place on the shortlist.

The search for the House of the Year 2025 continues with a home in Bannau Brycheiniog, the Brecon Beacons, built from sandstone quarried in the mountains it overlooks. Also, a project that used modern methods to reinvent Norwich's medieval brick tradition and a Suffolk property where handmade brick and Douglas fir beams combine in a striking cruciform design. Finally, an 18th-century Essex barn brought back to life beam-by-beam, its historic frame repaired with seasoned oak using centuries-old techniques.

The search for the House of the Year 2025 reaches its finale, as Kevin McCloud, architect Damion Burrows and conservation architect Natasha Huq visit homes that have been dramatically transformed through rescue, re-invention or bold re-imagining. On the Isle of Wight, barns on the brink of collapse are saved and reborn as a luminous retreat, their battered shells now glowing with life. In London, a 1960s townhouse is stripped back, rebuilt and transformed into a striking example of high-end brutalism, the height of architectural sophistication in its day and re-imagined for modern family life. In Somerset, a draughty 1960s bungalow is swept away and replaced with a low-energy, loft-like house that almost disappears into the landscape. In Bath, a tired bungalow is completely overhauled, its flimsy frame wrapped in cedar shingles. In Suffolk, the very idea of what a house can be is completely transformed, where one home becomes four buildings - sleeping, living, working and utility - in a radical feat of architectural imagination. And finally, after finding out which of these incredible transformations has been shortlisted, the winner of the RIBA House of the Year 2025 is crowned.