Big Design Adventure

Tim and Kev head to Melbourne to visit Ben Shewry, the chef behind the world-famous restaurant Attica, who lives in the 1966 home designed by émigré architect Ernest Fooks.
Ben, who has a deep passion for architecture and design, had long admired the house from afar, but he never thought he’d actually own it.
In this episode, he not only flings open the door to his incredible heritage-listed home, but he shares the story of how he ended up living in his dream mid-century modern home.
A natural storyteller, Ben effortlessly draws parallels between cooking and architecture, and reveals his long-standing passion for chair collecting in this wide-ranging chat in one of Melbourne’s finest houses.
The Chef: Ben Shewry is a New Zealand–born Australian chef and owner-executive chef of Attica. Since taking over in 2005, he has made Attica one of the world’s most celebrated restaurants, known for native Australian ingredients and deeply personal storytelling. Shewry was featured on Netflix’s Chef’s Table in 2017, which profiled his creative philosophy and journey.
You can check out his restaurant website attica.com.au and get his best selling book here: Uses For
Obsession
Follow Ben on Instagram here: @benshewry
The Architect: Ernest Fooks (1906–1985) was an Austrian-born architect who helped shape postwar
modernism in Melbourne. Trained in Vienna, he fled Nazi Europe and brought continental ideas of
functional planning and light-filled design to Australia. Fooks designed houses, civic buildings and
synagogues, and later became a respected educator and town-planning advocate in Victoria.
You can find out more about the house on Docomomo Australia.
To view images from this episode, head to our Instagram page - @big_design_adventure
And be sure to follow Tim Ross (@modernister) and Kevin McCloud (@kevin.mccloud1)
We’d love to hear from you, reach out to us on [email protected]
Know someone who would love this podcast? Please help us share this exciting new adventure.

Big Design Adventure is proudly sponsored by Space Furniture (@spacefurniture), the Australian Institute of Architects (@institute_architects_aus) and is produced with the support of the Alastair Swayn Foundation (@alastairswaynfoundation).

Hosts: Tim Ross and Kevin McCloud
Guest: Ben Shewry
Big Design Adventure is produced by Modernister Films on Wallumedegal land, Australia.
Executive Producer: Shelley Kemp
Audio Production: Madeline Joannou – Mylk Media
Music: Kit Warhurst (@kitwarhurst)

Please note this podcast is not currently available in the UK or Ireland.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tim and Kev head to the Sydney inner-city suburb of Marrickville to visit artist Leila Jeffreys and musician James Roden, who have spent a decade transforming a modest weatherboard cottage into a small but carefully considered home.
Their dream? A small sustainable home that works for them and connects them to nature by creating
habitat for birds and native species while rethinking what a suburban block can become.
The result is a house which nods to Australian modernism that Kevin wants to move into and a
conversation that will definitely be good for your soul.
Leila is an award-winning photographic artist whose images of birds have been exhibited all over the
world and have featured in a number of best-selling publications. You can visit her website here:
leilajeffreys.com
James Roden is a musician who has also worked for record labels and as a band manager. He’s now the studio manager of Leila’s practice.
You can check out his latest musical project here: snakeheads.com.au
The house was designed by Will Fung at CO-AP Architects. co-ap.com
Will has a great Instagram page (@will.fung)
To view images from this episode, head to our Instagram page - @big_design_adventure
And be sure to follow Tim Ross (@modernister) and Kevin McCloud (@kevin.mccloud1)
We’d love to hear from you, reach out to us on [email protected]
Know someone who would love this podcast? Please help us share this exciting new adventure.

Big Design Adventure is proudly sponsored by Space Furniture (@spacefurniture), the Australian Institute of Architects (@institute_architects_aus) and is produced with the support of the Alastair Swayn Foundation (@alastairswaynfoundation).

Hosts: Tim Ross and Kevin McCloud
Guests: Leila Jeffreys and James Roden
Big Design Adventure is produced by Modernister Films on Wallumedegal land, Australia.
Executive Producer: Shelley Kemp
Audio Production: Madeline Joannou – Mylk Media
Music: Kit Warhurst (@kitwarhurst)

Please note this podcast is not currently available in the UK or Ireland.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Can you imagine living in a museum?
Tim and Kev head to Surrey to visit The Homewood, the modernist masterpiece Patrick Gwynne
designed for his family in the late 1930s. Completed in 1938, The Homewood is one of the most
remarkable examples of pre-war modernist architecture in Britain.
Gwynne later gifted the house to the National Trust in 1999, with the stipulation that someone must live in it and that it be opened to the public for part of the year.
That person is Lou, whose family has called it home since 2004 while welcoming visitors inside this
extraordinary piece of living history.
I bet you’ve got questions already. We certainly did - and we’ve probably asked most of them in this
fascinating interview, recorded around Gwynne’s own custom-made round dining table.
Thanks to Lou and The National Trust for assisting with this episode. You can learn more about the house and when you can visit here on their website: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/surrey/the-homewood
To view images from this episode, head to our Instagram page - @big_design_adventure
And be sure to follow Tim Ross (@modernister) and Kevin McCloud (@kevin.mccloud1)
We’d love to hear from you, reach out to us on [email protected]
Know someone who would love this podcast? Please help us share this exciting new adventure.

Big Design Adventure is proudly sponsored by Space Furniture (@spacefurniture), the Australian Institute of Architects (@institute_architects_aus) and is produced with the support of the Alastair Swayn Foundation (@alastairswaynfoundation).

Hosts: Tim Ross and Kevin McCloud
Guest: Louise Scott
Big Design Adventure is produced by Modernister Films on Wallumedegal land, Australia.
Executive Producer: Shelley Kemp
Audio Production: Madeline Joannou – Mylk Media
Music: Kit Warhurst (@kitwarhurst)

Please note this podcast is not currently available in the UK or Ireland.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What happens when you try to fix the housing crisis without destroying the suburbs we love? You get
density by stealth.
Tim and Kev head to the Perth suburbia to visit Giuseppe’s House, a 1960s home recently restored by
local architect Kate Fitzgerald. Beneath the terrazzo floors and colourful character lies a bigger idea: how to add more housing to our cities without flattening their identity.
Kate shares her approach to preserving streetscapes while quietly increasing density, rethinking
backyards, laneways and overlooked spaces to create the “missing middle” between apartments and
traditional homes. Along the way, they unpack Perth’s boom-and-bust development history, the rise of
migrant architecture, and why small, clever infill might be the key to housing affordability.
Check out Kate’s work on their website - https://www.whisperingsmith.com.au including her home (House A) and Giuseppe’s House.

To view images from this episode, head to our Instagram page - @big_design_adventure
And be sure to follow Tim Ross (@modernister) and Kevin McCloud (@kevin.mccloud1)
We’d love to hear from you, reach out to us on [email protected]
Know someone who would love this podcast? Please help us share this exciting new adventure.

Big Design Adventure is proudly sponsored by Space Furniture (@spacefurniture), the Australian Institute of Architects (@institute_architects_aus) and is produced with the support of the Alastair Swayn Foundation (@alastairswaynfoundation).

Hosts: Tim Ross and Kevin McCloud
Guest: Kate Fitzgerald (@whisperingsmith_)
Big Design Adventure is produced by Modernister Films on Wallumedegal land, Australia.
Executive Producer: Shelley Kemp
Audio Production: Madeline Joannou – Mylk Media
Music: Kit Warhurst (@kitwarhurst)

Please note this podcast is not currently available in the UK or Ireland.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We’re back with Series Two!

Tim and Kevin head to Birmingham to explore a city defined by industry, reinvention and the home
of Peaky Blinders, Black Sabbath and ELO.

Over tea and biscuits with journalist and campaigner Mary Keating, they examine the fight to save the
Smallbrook Ringway Centre, one of Europe’s longest modernist buildings and a rare surviving example of Birmingham’s post-war ambition.

In the decades following the Second World War, Birmingham was radically reshaped by modern planning and the rise of the car. New roads, new civic buildings and bold architectural experiments transformed the city, reflecting a belief that modern design could deliver progress, efficiency and optimism. Today, many of these - particularly brutalist - buildings are under threat, dismissed as outdated or expendable. The Ringway Centre sits at the heart of this debate, raising the question of whether a city’s confidence can determine which buildings survive.

Follow Brutiful Birmingham (@brutifulbirmingham) and Birmingham Modernist (@birminghammodernist) on Instagram.

To view images from this episode, head to our Instagram page - @big_design_adventure
And be sure to follow Tim Ross (@modernister) and Kevin McCloud (@kevin.mccloud1)
We’d love to hear from you, reach out to us on [email protected]
Know someone who would love this podcast? Please help us share this exciting new adventure.

Big Design Adventure is proudly sponsored by Space Furniture (@spacefurniture), the Australian Institute of Architects (@institute_architects_aus) and is produced with the support of the Alastair Swayn Foundation (@alastairswaynfoundation).

Hosts: Tim Ross and Kevin McCloud
Guest: Mary Keating
Big Design Adventure is produced by Modernister Films on Wallumedegal land, Australia.
Executive Producer: Shelley Kemp
Audio Production: Madeline Joannou – Mylk Media
Music: Kit Warhurst (@kitwarhurst)

Please note this podcast is not currently available in the UK or Ireland.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.