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TV review: Extraordinary homes that push the boundaries

Piers Taylor and Caroline Quentin present The World's Most Extraordinary Homes
Piers Taylor and Caroline Quentin present The World's Most Extraordinary Homes

World’s Most Extraordinary Homes, Tuesday, BBC Two, 7pm

DO you know that feeling when you enter someone else's home and have that twinge of jealousy?

Those feelings of envy that their decor, furniture and even the coffee cup you are drinking from are impressive. And when you return to your own humble abode, you only wish the team from 60 Minute Makeover had worked their magic.

Perhaps watching The World's Most Extraordinary Homes - a show about spectacular, and I mean spectacular properties - wasn't the smartest idea for someone who can't decide on what goes best with magnolia.

Award-winning architect Piers Taylor and actress and property lover Caroline Quentin explore magnificent homes built in the most unique and sometimes completely remote regions of the world.

From sites on the sides of a mountain, to forests or properties dotted along beautiful coastlines as well as underground locations around the globe, my four-bedroom detached looks like a mere shed compared to some of the homes featured.

The episode focuses on homes built in mountain locations and meets home-owner Francie, a retired Mercedes-Benz dealer, who built her dream home from the most unthinkable re-used building material.

Quite unbelievably her house in sunny Santa Monica, California was built from parts of a Boeing 747. While paying just £40,000 for the retired plane, the real expense began when the wings, fins and a piece of fuselage had to be brought to the remote site by helicopter.

Francie, clearly a tad eccentric, tells how she interviewed more than a dozen architects before she chose David Hertz, who came up with his madcap idea during a flight and says: "Why try to build a wing when you could appropriate a wing?"

As the re-purposed material was transformed into use at her mountain site home, including the aluminium wings to form the roof of the property, it required clearance by 17 authorities and the closing of five freeways and a highway patrol escort during construction.

Clearly a woman of considerable wealth, Francie would only say the final bill had ran into "millions and millions of dollars", but says: "It's a phenomenal environment, it's so very beautiful, every day is a complete and utter joy".

Quentin and Taylor then visit the desert Tucson mountain range of Arizona where guests must walk across a set of concrete cubes to reach the front door, not an easy task as Quentin discovers. "How would you get inside laden with supermarket shopping bags?" she asks.

Home-owners Karen and Dave - doctors from San Diego - bought the land in the Arizona desert after a 12-year-search and employed architects to create a home that had little impact on the fragile environment.

But they needed their home to also protect them the extremes of weather where summers hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit and winters drop below freezing.

Their dream eco-friendly home has walls of rammed earth that absorb heat in the day and release it at night to minimise heating and cooling costs and they reminisce about how they only had to replant three cacti during the house build.

Quentin's squeals of delight speak for everyone watching on the sofa at home - she's the one that does the feelings in the show and Taylor tells us the facts.

Forget the epic Grand Designs, for this programme looks at extraordinary homes on a completely different level.

The homes are state-of-the-art, they're one of a kind, but can also border on obscure and nearly unliveable.

But with amazing ideas and breathtaking landscapes, it inspires viewers to push the boundaries of what can be done when building their own dream home.