‘I used to win Lego contests … but I lied about my age’

Dermot Bannon doesn’t care about the confinement; spends more time at home with his family, which actually exists

A few days before the new pandemic restrictions, I’m going to sit in Dermot Bannon’s garden. I’ve written about her ever-entertaining home makeover show Room to Improve more than any other show, but we’ve never met in person before. When he texted me his address, I was going to reply “I know where you live,” but then I thought better of it.

“That would have been a little creepy, okay,” Bannon nods when he arrives.

He’s in a great mood with my obsessive attempts to document his work. Like his wife Louise. “ME do they really exist, ”she says pointedly when I meet her.

He had suggested in a previous column that she didn’t really exist. “You forget what you have written, right?” says Bannon, laughing.

The reason Louise and her children (who exist too) are happy to stay out of the spotlight is because almost every place Bannon goes, people take out their cell phones and take pictures of him or show him pictures. extensions you want to participate in. And who needs that?

We sat at a table in front of its sliding rear doors in the “outdoor room” that you will recognize from the latest series. He notes that he hasn’t grout his garden steps yet because he has a tendency to put off his own projects when the cameras go off. “All good things, I have put them on the long finger.”

When did you first want to be an architect? “I don’t remember wanting to be something else,” he says. “My dad was a horticulturist. . . My mother was a home economics teacher. There were no architects in the family. . . But I was building things with Lego for as long as I can remember. This is really sad, but Arnotts used to host Lego building contests. I used to go in and win. I think in the last competition I was too old for that, but I lied about my age. “

Did you win that year? “Yes.”

Who built? “We go there, right? I would have built buildings, but because there was so much Lego in there, you could build them as big as possible. It was like this Aladdin’s cave. You could requisition a large load for yourself. It could be there for five hours. You would leave it on a pedestal with a card. “

Did he win a grand prize, something Arnotts could demand now that I exposed the scandal? “You won a voucher for a book or something like that. Five. It was more of an honor. “

I could lie to you and tell you that I’m not interested in TV, that I just wanted to be a serious architect.

His interest in buildings grew out of his interest in people. His family left Malahide for two years in Cairo when he was around six years old (his father worked there) and he remembered being fascinated by the way people interacted with their environment. This interest spread to Irish cities. “At my grandmother’s house at Campile in Wexford there were pillars outside the church [and people] hung around the pillars like around a bar table. “

He inherited a community spirit from his busy parents, spending weekends watering plants and cleaning streets for Malahide Tidy Towns (his father was very involved in this). After the Lego phase, he was more likely rubbing beeswax on old chairs he bought from a junk shop than playing sports.

When he finally went to study architecture, everything from door handle design to urban planning captivated him. Over the course of our talk, he references inspiring architects like Luigi Snozzi, Herman Herzberger, and Group 91. He talks about a putative college campus he designed to run alongside the river in Kilkenny and he still sounds raving about it.

“Sounds utopian,” I say.

“It is,” he says.

Bannon’s passionate utopian appears in Room to Improve and it’s what makes him so enjoyable. The clash between your high-level vision and that of your less aesthetically sophisticated clients can be very entertaining. He had previously been designing hospitals and schools, but 14 years ago, when he saw that Coco Productions was looking for a replacement for Roisin Murphy at House Hunters, he applied.

“I could lie to you and tell you that I have no interest in television, that I just wanted to be a serious architect, but then why did I apply? I remember making the phone call thinking that I was not so serious about doing it. But I was. There was something really intriguing about it. The room for improvement came the following year. “

The rationale for Room to Improve at the time, he says, was that people were paying huge amounts of stamp duty on new homes, when they could have used the money to improve the ones they had. “RTÉ was not convinced that I could do it myself,” he says. “They weren’t convinced that I was a strong enough character. There were all these talks about a psychologist or life coaches. . . And I guess I’m not a natural presenter. I am not a host. I’m not a ‘ta-da!’ with the jazz hands kind of person. I think the audience feels like they’re getting closer to something that I’m involved in. “

We discuss Irish extension building culture and how Room to Improve fits into it. “In Ireland we had a habit of redecorating and putting in an extension just because a communion was coming up,” he laughs. “There is no other society that does that. And it usually immerses a room in the middle of the house in darkness. And they never use it, they just walk to the new kitchen. . . Hopefully Room to Improve has shown that there are other ways of doing things. “

Irish tastes have changed, he says. I’ve joked in the past that Room to Improve is basically The Field without Yank’s murder. He uses the analogy about the Irish and the land himself. “It’s The Field,” he says. “First it was about owning land. And then it was about having a bigger plot of land. “

For a long time, he says, size was everything. Now, he says, people “want quality of space, rather than quantity of space. When I started as an architect, it was all about private baths and greenhouses. They had a list of spaces. But no one ever described what the spaces were like. They just wanted to be able to say ‘I have a house with five bedrooms, all with bathroom.’ I have learned much more from someone who describes to me on a Saturday or Tuesday what they need, rather than ‘we need this and this.’

But things have changed, he says. “Now people say, look, I would love it to be full of light. I wish the rooms were connected. ”Lighting he jokingly refers to as“ module one. ”“ I think, ‘Did we do something light? Do we all have that?’ ”

Don’t you ever say, ‘I wish it was really dark’?

He laughs. “Those people go to the other architects. The dark architects “.

Does your desire to be seen as a good architect ever collide with the needs of good TV?

I never really missed [going out to] job. What is much more important is the human connection, your friends, your family.

“I remember making a mistake in one of the first seasons about the size of a window,” he says. “I didn’t tell anyone. All I could think of was, ‘How am I going to fix this? The window is bad. And we were having lunch and I was like, ‘I’m glad it’s over. It was frightening. Do you know that there is a mistake? And the director said, ‘We’re going to re-shoot that now. And I felt grossed out and a little betrayed by the producers. But when I watched it again it turned out to be really good TV and I was like, ‘Okay, as long as it gets fixed, it’s okay to say you made a mistake. In fact, people were glad I made the mistake because I got emails saying, ‘Oh, the same thing happened to me.’

A new production of Room to Improve is underway, although there is no air date yet. Meanwhile, he has created two episodes of Incredible Homes. It is usually a travel journal about the best international architecture. They managed to film an episode in Canada but then restrictions prevented them from filming an episode in Spain. So in the second episode, they ended up focusing on Irish houses. “And I really loved that episode.” It’s a little different, he says. “I usually try to tell the story of its architecture, and its people, its climate and culture through its buildings. When it comes to Ireland, it doesn’t make sense for me to say, ‘Oh my God, it’s so humid here.’

He went to see three beautiful houses, one designed by Niall McLaughlin, who, if you’ve been watching Room to Improve, was the man who suggested to Bannon that large windows could be problematic, because Ireland gets dark at night. This inspired him to light his garden with “downlighting”. It shows me the “down lighting” from where we are sitting.

How has the pandemic changed your life? He’s stoic about how it’s affecting his business and says it has made him rethink his work-life balance. “It made me think a lot about the time with the children because I got a lot and realized how much I was missing.”

At the right moment, a child passes by. “Do you have a helmet?” Bannon calls.

“Yes,” says the boy without a helmet.

“I mean your head,” he calls it.

His priorities changed this year, he says. “I never really missed [going out to] job. What I really felt robbed was all those times I said no to going out and sitting with friends at the pub or having lunch. . . What is much more important is the human connection, your friends, your family. “

Bannon is a thoughtful man. I had to reschedule this interview because my father was in the hospital and not only was he accommodating, but he was kind and told me a little about when his late father was sick. Before I leave, he offers to show me the cast iron garden bath that I have lampooned on my TV column. It is at the end of your landscaped garden, near a fire pit suitable for enclosures and will be used in conjunction with the sauna which can be found in an elegant shed.

“I’m sorry I said it was like something old Steptoe would have,” I say.

He laughs. “Ah, it’s a bit.” It is currently full of deflated soccer balls.

We stand there for a moment. The dome of a nearby church can be seen through the trees and is illuminated at night. “It’s like being in the Vatican,” he says.

It’s a little.

Dermot Bannon’s Incredible Homes airs on Sunday October 25 at 9:30 p.m. on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player.