The Brave Couple Who Built A Rural Storm-Proof Tiny Home | Grand Designs House of the Year

Our first long-listed home, built against the odds, sits in the remote Outer Hebrides on Harris, a rugged island off the west coast of Scotland. This is Cochin-na-Craig, a jewel-like home built beside the water and through nine savage storms. The house is compact and efficient, centred on a bright open plan kitchen and living space. Off this is a quiet bedroom, a single bathroom, a utility room, all neatly arranged with no need for corridors. It was the work of a brave couple. It's architects Ailey and her partner, Jack, who built it by hand. They moved to the island after falling in love with it when visiting. While they planned the project, they rented and got their first taste of the challenges of building here. I think we're up home. Calling it a day then. We went through one of the first main storms there. This is a traditional stone house and the house was shaking. The roof blew off, the polytunnel at the back flew away. We were actually nervous our car was going to roll. I think it was gusting over 100 miles an hour. It was quite a welcome to the island. Ailey had a strong vision of how to make something that would belong in this place. We knew that we wanted to be working with the stone, with the materials from the landscape. Easier said than done, of course. But their friend, Dan, a stonemason, took on that hard task with relish. We're working with something called Louisiana gneiss. And that is incredibly dense and incredibly heavy. So the first few days trying to get my body conditioned to be able to just lump that stuff around was really, really difficult. It was really, really tough going. This ancient rock, Louisiana gneiss, is what the whole island is made from. And there was also a great big lump of it right in the middle of where Ailey and Jack were building. So Ailey made a big design decision. We decided to actually work with it. Using the area that we had around this rock created this 135 cubic feet angle. Inside, this unusual shape makes the small house feel bigger. It opens it up with angled views through to other rooms. The RIBA judges admired this compact yet generous home where each space has a different character. You can see through from the living space into the kitchen space whilst they are still separate. So that's really successful. Each one of the rooms spans directly off of a centralized living room. And it's making the most of the space within a very, very small house. So there's no circulation. They managed to build this extraordinarily beautiful place for just £167,000 by designing and building it themselves. Living on site as they were building. What I'm most proud of is the fact that we've done it. We kind of set out to do this without knowing what we wanted to achieve. We wanted to do a really nice design. We wanted to have a place that we could live ourselves that reflected our values, our ethos, how we practice. We ask clients to take the risk every day in our work. And so if we can't do it, then it's tricky to ask other people. So I'm so proud that we've taken the leap to live somewhere that we want, to build something that we want. And we're now living here and it couldn't be better for me. Joining me is the chair of the judges, David Cohn. David, how many houses have you chosen from this category to be on the short list? So in this category, there are two. First being Coick and the Clegg. It's very, very carefully put together. It's a level of craftsmanship that exceeds just the material and its assembly. It's so inspiring. It really isn't a building that's about itself. It's a building about a way of making homes, about the island, about craft traditions. That's amazing. Yeah, wonderful. Oh, well, if we can, I don't know, again, if our story can inspire others, then that would be the nicest thing that maybe comes of it. But that is an incredible piece of news. Thank you.