WATCHING Grand Designs, I sometimes sympathise with French peasants who stood by while Versailles took shape, looming over their hovels. You watch, open-mouthed and speechless, but not in a good way.

Whenever presenter Kevin McCloud charts the progress of plucky restorations, my heart sings. In another existence, I’d have liked nothing better than taking a ruinous keep under my wing, and returning it to life. Massive new-builds, however, generally leave me cold. I think of them as Grandiose Designs.

While McCloud applauds brutalist mansions for their eco-credentials and cutting-edge design (“brave”), I wonder what the neighbours think.

The sight of one family home in particular – taking up almost as much space as an Ikea warehouse – staggered me. This enormous construction, made of concrete, steel and glass, was positioned on a hill amid rolling Devon countryside. Undeniably it was a feat of architectural engineering (“radical”). Also of hubris.

READ MORE: Why the customer is no longer king

With a garage the builder described as “the size of a three-bedroom bungalow”, and rooms in which giraffes could roam without losing their heads, it was intended to inspire awe. Some viewers commented on the inordinate sum the owners splashed out on their kitchen – £125k – but if you have the money, where’s the harm in that?

My issue was not with what was spent on either the building or its interior, nor that it was not to my taste. I was simply amazed that this futuristic Leviathan, dominating the skyline and looking more like a bank’s headquarters than a country home, had been deemed appropriate for its setting. Did anyone speak to locals, to ask what they felt?

Closer to home, a proposed new-build in Edinburgh is raising hackles. This modernist design will soar above the street below, in the Braid Hills area of the city, allowing spectacular views of Edinburgh Castle. The owners, who shared a Lottery win, bought a single-storey bungalow on this site, which they plan to demolish and replace with a three-storey balconied house, described by their agent as “a significant statement”.

The 1950s bungalow had a 160-square metre footprint. If they get permission to build their dream home, it will occupy 554 square metres. Forty-nine objections have been registered with the planning authorities, but also 15 notes of support. Those against say they fear invasion of their privacy, since the new house will be able to look down onto them. It’ll be like a cruise ship in a Venetian canal, dwarfing palazzos as it passes.

The architects’ computer image of this striking glass-filled house suggests it would look great on the banks of the Thames or on a Glasgow wharf. In a leafy row of bungalows, however, it’s in danger of seeming like a cuckoo in the nest. As Kirsty Allsopp is wont to say, location is key.

READ MORE: Could you be friends with a Putin apologist?

In scale and ambition this proposal is similar to some featured on Grand Designs: flamboyant, eye-catching, demanding to be the centre of attention. Admittedly, the show’s most costly projects are a pale reflection of the era of spectacularly extravagant town houses and country retreats.

None can compare with the cost and splendour of anything designed or landscaped by Robert Adam or Capability Brown. Their work, however, was typical of a period when the cavernous gulf between rich and poor was seen as the natural order of things. It was a time when trumpeting your fortune was for political advancement as well as personal gratification. Today, unless you’re an oligarch, the mood is subtly changing. Jaw-dropping statements of affluence are slowly going out of fashion.

Doubtless inspired by the projects seen on programmes like Grand Designs, in recent years mould-breaking houses have been constructed on an industrial, impregnable, almost hostile scale. They stand like islands of architectural experimentation and social aloofness amid a sea of the ordinary and unadventurous. The brief for these ventures could be summed up as: bigger, ballsier, braver.

But does it have to be like this? With a planet in crisis, requiring all of us to shrink our footprint, would it not be more appropriate, and challenging, to think small? To bring imaginations to bear on the inventive use of limited space and to design aesthetically pleasing and dramatic contemporary housing, on a modest scale?

One of the admirable qualities of those whose half-built houses Kevin McCloud showcases is their ability to keep going when the budget runs out of control, and they need to borrow further tens of thousands to save the enterprise from collapse. If nothing else, Grand Designs has functioned as a terrifying cautionary tale for the financially timid – like me – not to contemplate a self-build if they don’t have nerves as strong as girders and a source of additional funding tucked beneath the mattress.

Yet timid or not, the way ahead is to live more humbly. Housing should become a reflection of the awareness that humans need to take up less space and use fewer resources. Small must be recognised as beautiful, not least for those in most urgent need. While Edinburgh’s planning department deliberates over whether to allow a giant house to soar over others’ rooftops – the very definition of neighbourhood watch – the national priority should be to devise plans for first-rate and stunning social housing. These tenants require not just a place to call home, but the comfort and sense of well-being and self-esteem a cleverly designed, appealing-looking house can bring.

The correlation between ugly surroundings and poor mental health has long been recognised. Personally, I’ve seen social housing I’d much rather live in than some that appear on Grand Designs. But we need far more of it, in cities, towns and above all in rural areas. Complaints about eating into the countryside would be defused if designs were sympathetic to the environment, and to the eye.

Architects and their clients and planning departments need to see diminutive, sustainable housing, both social and private, as the place to make their mark in the present, and long into the future. Mammoth-sized houses will one day be white elephants, reflective of a heedless time when resources were squandered and worth was equated with wealth.

Building houses that reflect a less lofty attitude, that are aesthetically pleasing as well as eco-friendly, is the first step towards a new world, one that genuinely deserves to be hailed as brave.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of the Herald.