A new television series will soon launch on Foxtel’s Lifestyle and Lifestyle Home channels to find ‘Australia’s Best Home’.
Featuring architect and Tobias Partners founder Nick Tobias alongside interior designers Gillian Khaw and Tim Leveson, the television series will have the presenters stay overnight in unique houses around Australia, and get to know the owners who created them.
Working with the Grand Designs production team, Tobias travelled across the continent to visit nine vastly different houses ranging from a bohemian collection of beach shacks in Byron Bay to a super-sustainable contemporary house in Alice Springs, and on to Margaret River to unwind in a smart bush retreat.
Tobias explains that the show features three amazing homes in each episode and will explore ‘what makes a house a home’ – the vital ingredient being not the budget or the site, but all about the individual owners and their unique expression. For instance, Tobias stayed in a house in Adelaide that was built by some architects and their friends, using their own labour and recycled materials, for a total cost of about $70,000.
The show presented Tobias with the opportunity to examine design issues objectively while discussing inspirations and motivations with the owners, and reviewing processes and outcomes with his co-presenters. He believes that meeting the owners and learning about their journeys has enhanced his sense of empathy for people and their very personal stories, adding that the story behind a home is really important, and therefore wants to encourage people to tell their stories through their houses.
According to Tobias, the show has reinforced the fact that their job as architects is to help clients explore who they are, and how they can manifest that identity in built form.
All the homeowners featured in the new television series are competing for the title of ‘Australia’s Best Home’, which will be determined through public voting. The owners of the house that receives the most votes will then direct a $30,000 donation to a charity of their choice.
The ten-week series launches on Foxtel’s Lifestyle and Lifestyle Home channels at 8.30pm on Wednesday 28th September.
