Martin Pease is a successful commercial architect, used to designing large scale prestigious offices. However, he's about to embark on a much more personal project - a home for his wife Katherine and their two lively children

Andrew and Lowri Davies embark on a project to build an environmentally friendly farmhouse in rural Wales. Encouraged by their architect, they opt for some state-of-the-art experimental building materials; but do their builders know how to use them?

When lawyers Jeremy and Louise Brown walked into Upthorpe Farm in Gloucester, they couldn't believe their eyes. It was like stepping back in time. Apart from a few minor alterations, the Grade II listed 16th-century farmhouse had barely been touched for over 400 years and was completely unmodernised with lots of original features. Now that they've purchased the property their ambitious design plan is to bring the farmhouse into the 21st century

Jim Fairfull considers himself a very lucky guy. He was out fishing with a friend when he came across a beautiful, secluded loch. It's a magical place with stunning views over the nearby hills. He got chatting to the farmer who owned it and discovered the site was for sale. Within a week, he'd done a deal and bought the land

Bill and Jean Letley are building a new bungalow in their back garden, but this will be no ordinary bungalow. Embracing the latest home technologies, this will be a modern, accessible, efficient home

Jo and Shaun Bennett are in love with the past, particularly Gothic architecture. Inspired by their love of all things medieval, the house that they dream of building is pure Addams family

Oxford is an architecturally inspiring place to live, but building plots are rare. So when a prime site came up, surveyor Henry Chopping jumped at the chance to build something special. And for once, it's just for himself

Hillcott Barn looked more like a Tuscan monastery than an English barn. When the farmer put it up for sale, most people who viewed it walked away. It was dark and isolated and could only be reached by a half mile farm track with a steep gradient.

Every Englishman's home is his castle but for Francis Shaw this is quite literally true. He and his wife, Karen, and their two young daughters, bought the ruins of a 14th Century castle in Yorkshire and took on the remarkable challenge of turning a pile of stones into a beautiful home

A couple convert a flat originally built as a solarium in the 1920’s into a modern, luxury penthouse in Bournemouth

Kelly and Masoko Neville set about building not just a spectacular oak frame and straw bale house, but a whole new way of life in the Cambridgeshire Fens.

Kevin McCloud meets Julie and Mark Veysey, whose Grand Design is a stunning Miami-style beach house on a beachfront plot overlooking the south Devon coast

Deni Daniel and Doug Ibbs don't hang around. The couple, in their mid-50's and from Dorset, bought a 19th century manor house in Creuse, Limousin - in central France - on a Sunday, having seen it for the first time ever on the previous Tuesday on the Internet and visited it on the Thursday. They don't mind hard work too, which is even better news because the house was a wreck.

Nicky and James Dobree were raised in France and in a mountainous area respectively. Nicky was raised in France, James in Beirut - both have fond memories of the mountains as children. So it was natural for them to one day look to buy a place amongst France's tallest peaks, the Alps.

Mark and Deborah (Debbie) Sampson and daughter, Tilley, like to practice an ecologically sound way of life. Following a period of eight years living elsewhere in France, where they found it difficult to be fully accepted by their neighbours, the Sampsons decided to move to Martel in the Lot region in southwest France, where life's pace is relaxed, and start afresh.

Gil Briffa, an architect, and his wife Hilary, from St Albans, Herts, wanted a house they could retire to in southern Spain, but not just any old place would do.

Four years ago artists David Westby and Leonie Whitton bought a derelict olive farm in Puglia, a beautiful region of Italy. Three years after Kevin last visited, have they finished their home and created the artists' paradise they had always envisaged?

This week Kevin meets a couple who bought a ruin and moved to Italy in 1999, hoping to start work building their dream home in Tuscany. Since then they've spent all their time trying to get planning permission, but finally, after four years, they are about to start work.

Michael Palin visits the Potala Palace and the great monasteries of Tashilunpo and Sera, where the traditional Tibetan towns are being replaced by modern Chinese cities, he then accompanies some pilgrims to the holy Namtso Lake.

Documentary discovering how our medieval forebears built the wonders of their world.

David Dimbleby travels north of the border to find out how Scotland developed a style of building quite different from that in England. Join him on a journey from the extraordinary visions of Stirling Castle to the Scottish baronial of Dunrobin; from the crofter's community of Gearrannan on the Isle of Lewis to Charles Rennie Mackintosh's masterpiece,

David Dimbleby starts his journey in Ely in the spectacular cathedral that dominates the Fens. He explores the world of medieval knights at Hedingham Castle, travels to Norwich to discover the workings of a great medieval city and visits Lavenham which grew fat on the cloth trade

David Dimbleby looks at how England was transformed by the extraordinary flowering of architecture, ideas and exploration of the Elizabethan Renaissance. Take a journey that tracks the newly rich to stately homes like Burghley House and follows those who hid, in fear of their lives, in the secret spaces in Harvington Hall.

At the start of Victoria's reign, the north of England seemed out of control. Enormous industrial cities lacked basic amenities whilst many of their inhabitants lived in slums. David Dimbleby travels to Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool, to tell the story of Britain's greatest construction boom.

The 20th century was driven by the ideal of progress, and the heart of that movement was in London and the South East. David Dimbleby embarks on a journey that explores how the idea evolved, from the commuter's dream of a house in the suburbs, to the modernist vision of streets in the sky, and the breathtaking scale and ambition of hi-tech building in the City of London.

David Dimbleby encounters the grace and elegance of the Georgian terraces of Bath and Bristol, the magnificent country houses of Blenheim and the gardens of Stourhead. He discovers where the seeds of the Industrial Revolution were sown, in the canals and locks of the West Country and the tin mines of Cornwall. He also travels across Wales to Thomas Telford's Menai Bridge and to Ireland to tell the story of Georgian Dublin

A look at the one environment that\'s been made by us for us - the city. Over half of the world\'s population now lives in the urban jungle. The city is built to keep untamed nature out - but nature can\'t be pushed away. From bed bugs sucking our blood at night to rats in our restaurants, many animals have adapted to a life with us.

Film about the architect John Portman, capturing his approach in an intimate portrait that, by turn, assesses and appreciates his work, using dramatic time-lapse footage to show off his buildings at their best

Following the front line of engineering and high-tech construction

The inside story of the building of the clever arena, which was the centre of world attention in the 2012 Olympic games.