How did the idea of COLONIAL HOUSE come about?
COLONIAL HOUSE grew out of the successful “House” strand, which goes all the way back to THE 1900 HOUSE — which was the idea of some of my colleagues in the U.K. who sat down and said, “How could we look at how far domestic technology has come in the last 100 years?” They were looking at the projects for the year 2000 at the time and had this idea: “Let’s create a house that doesn’t have any tools and technology of the last 100 years and make some people live there and see what happens.” I got involved in that show when it was about halfway done. When it was first pitched to me I said, “Oh, that’s a great idea, but that’s a bunch of English people living in a funny little house. I’m not sure it’ll work in the U.S., but maybe we can find something that’ll work here.” Then I went there, saw the house, saw what it was like — it felt like time-traveling. It was fascinating; it was wonderful. Then I saw the rushes [raw footage] that were coming out of these peoples’ experience, and it was
