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Piers Taylor

Dr Piers Taylor is a renowned award winning architect, broadcaster and academic.

Piers co-presented two series of’ ‘The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes’ with Caroline Quentin on BBC Two. He also presented three series of ‘The House that £100k Built’ on BBC Two which demonstrates to self-builders how to do more, with less. Piers also presented the hit spin-off series’, Tricks of the Trade and The Final Fix also on BBC Two.

Piers has also presented Britain’s Most Spectacular Backyard Builds for BBC Two. He was also crowned the winner of Celebrity Mastermind in December 2016, his specialist subject being Bob Dylan.

Piers has been called ‘One of the brightest architects in the profession’ and has designed a number of seminal buildings, including the RIBA Award Winning ‘Room 13’, the multiple award winning large mixed use project East Quay, Watchet and the house ‘Moonshine’ which won the AJ Small Project Award. His built work has been published extensively and internationally, and typically pushes boundaries in terms of cost, technique and process. He is known for his resourceful ‘thinking outside of the box’ and his challenging of mainstream convention in architecture and in education.

He has founded two architectural practices – Mitchell Taylor Workshop and Invisible Studio. He is a former Design Fellow at the University of Cambridge, and a Studio Master at London’s Architectural Association, and sits on the South West Design Review Panel.

Invisible Studio’s Wolfson Tree Management Centre for Westonbirt Arboretum recently won 3 RIBA Awards, a National RIBA Award, the RIBA Sustainability Award and the RIBA client of the year Award, as indeed did East Quay.

He is widely engaged in a number of topical architectural issues, and contributes regularly to many architectural journals including the Architects’ Journal. He has also written for Blueprint, Building Design and the Architectural Review.

Piers is married with four children and lives in a self built house in a 100 acre woodland near Bath.

Colin & Justin

Colin & Justin are the dynamic design duo whose programmes have appeared across the television networks in the UK and in Canada.

Colin & Justin’s Hotel Hell is currently on Channel 5, documenting their purchase and refurbishment of a hotel in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Most recently in the UK they played a major part in the series, Home Is Where the Heart Is, for ITV. In these highly regarded programmes Colin & Justin took in Jim, an alcoholic who had been living on the streets, and played their part trying to improve his life.

They are also well known for their spell in the jungle as part of ITV’s I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! with Justin succeeding as one of the final four.

Following the jungle Colin & Justin hosted the popular 60 Minute Makeover for ITV, working their magic on properties from London all the way to Preston.

They have also appeared in Celebrity Masterchef, Stars in their Eyes and Let’s Dance for Comic Relief.

In Canada they are currently presenting Justin & Colin’s Cabin Pressure, transforming a unique vacation home in the countryside for HGTV. They previously presented Colin & Justin’s Street Swap also for HGTV and Colin and Justin’s Home Heist which showed them beautifying Canadian homes. They have now made-over 56 Canadian homes. This series aired across the world with an accompanying book.

Justin and Colin’s Home Show aired on UKTV.  They visited some of the biggest retail destinations in the UK from Bluewater to Meadowhall to Manchester’s Trafford Centre, making their own set from scratch in the middle of the shopping centre and transforming it into a spectacular themed room in front of a live audience, using furnishings and accessories sourced from the shopping centre.

They presented The Estate on Channel 5, a four-part documentary in which they demonstrated that everyone, regardless of where they are on the housing ladder should be entitled to basic standards of living by attempting to transform the Arden council estate in Glasgow. With grand plans but with no budget, their initial challenge was to make Arden a better place to live and to help residents regain their community pride.

They became wedding planners for three lucky couples with three different budgets in Justin and Colin’s Wedding Belles on Channel 5. They have also presented a range of peak-time property, entertainment and lifestyle series including How Not To Decorate; 20 Quickest Ways to Make Money; 20 Quickest Ways to Lose Money; Three Celebs And A Baby and Ultimate Celebrity Fashion Frock Ups.

Justin and Colin first came to the public’s notice in BBC2’s hugely successful series, Million Pound Property Experiment, which saw them buy, renovate and sell seven properties across Britain, ranging from £100,000 to £1.25 million.

They also presented BBC1’s Trading Up and the overseas spin-off Trading Up In The Sun which helped people buy homes in France, Spain and Cyprus.. Their live broadcasting experience is diverse, ranging from daytime programmes such as BBC1’s Housecall, to primetime shows such as Channel 5’s The Farm.

They both work at home, doing outside broadcasts and studio work. Colin and Justin are always hugely popular guests on all the main chat shows, on both sides of the Atlantic. They have had their own weekly show on BBC Radio Scotland and have enjoyed learning the technical skills of “driving the desk”. Their background lies originally in journalism and they have published Britain’s 100 Most Beautiful Homes for IPC as Contributing Home Editors. They still write design features for a wide range of publications. Their book, Colin and Justin’s How Not To Decorate (Time Warner), was published in 2004 and The Million Pound Property Experiment, the book which accompanied their groundbreaking series on BBC2, was voted the winner in the Lifestyle Category at the WHSmith People’s Choice Book Awards.

They were also event managers for the Scottish Ideal Home Show and for several years they have designed a Special Feature at the Earls Court Ideal Home Show. They have also fronted Ideal Home Show events across Canada. They are also in constant demand to host events, award ceremonies and dinners, both in the UK and Canada.

Tom Dyckhoff

Tom Dyckhoff is a historian, teacher, writer and broadcaster about cities, architecture, geographies and visual culture.

Tom presented the major BBC2 series, The Great Interior Design Challenge for four series, and is currently design judge on the Channel 4 series Handmade: Britain’s Best Woodworker, now on its third season.

He teaches the history and theory of cities and architecture at the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London and Central St Martins, University of the Arts, London.

Tom also presented the BBC Radio 4 series, The Design Dimension which looked at the world we inhabit through the lens of design. He was previously architecture and design critic for BBC television’s arts programme, The Culture Show, for which he interviewed architects from Oscar Niemeyer to Frank Gehry, and fronted special episodes on subjects including the Stirling Prize for architecture, Chinese culture, Lego, the new Birmingham library, and British architecture during the recession.

Tom has written and presented many series and documentaries on British television and radio, including Channel 4’s series The Secret Life of Buildings, which he looked at the effects of architecture and spaces on our brains and bodies; for BBC2’s series Saving Britain’s Past, Tom examined the country’s obsession with heritage; in I Love Carbuncles, for Channel 4, he revealed his passion for concrete Brutalism.

For radio, Tom has presented many BBC Radio 4 documentaries, too, such as ‘Anti-Architect: Cedric Price’, ‘Room With a View’ on the history of windows, ‘Animal Architecture’ on the architecture of zoos and a one-off special on polymath Buckminster Fuller.

He is the author of The Age of Spectacle: the rise and fall of iconic architecture (Windmill Books, 2017), and the official guide to the architecture of 2012’s Olympic Games, The Architecture of London 2012: Vision, Design, Legacy (John Wiley & Sons, 2012).

For a decade in the 00s, Tom was architecture and design critic for The Times newspaper, London. Tom also wrote a weekly column for The Guardian newspaper’s Weekend magazine for 20 years; and he writes and has long written for a wide range of publications including Esquire, GQ, Wallpaper, New Statesman, Domus, Icon and Blueprint.

Tom was educated at Oxford University and University College London, and began his career at Perspectives on Architecture for the then Prince of Wales, now King Charles III; he then became head of exhibitions at the Royal Institute of British Architects gallery, associate editor of Design magazine for the UK Design Council and then deputy editor of Space, The Guardian newspaper’s design and homes section.

Tom is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and a trustee of the London Festival of Architecture. He has been a trustee of the Architecture Foundation, and a judge on many design and architecture prizes, including the Stirling Prize (2013). He regularly lectures and hosts or chairs events, including The Stirling Prize in 2009 and 2010.

He lives in London, with his family.