Broadcasting

Tom has written and presented many series and one-off documentaries for television and streaming including four seasons of BBC/Prime’s primetime series The Great Interior Design Challenge; Channel 4’s The Secret Life of Buildings, in which he explored the effects of architecture and spaces on our brains and bodies; BBC’s seven-part series Saving Britain’s Past, digging into our collective obsession with heritage; and, with Mel Giedroyc and Sophie Sellu (above), two seasons of Channel 4’s Handmade, as design judge.

Tom also wrote and presented many short and full-length documentaries on architecture, cities and design for BBC television’s long-running weekly arts programme The Culture Show as its architecture and design reporter; wrote and presented I Love Carbuncles on postwar brutalism, for Channel 4’s The Art Show; and co-presented Channel 4’s Grand Designs: Trade Secrets, a spin-off from the popular property show.

For radio and podcast Tom has written and presented a range of series and one-off documentaries, such as, for BBC Radio 4,
Anti-Building with Cedric Price (2023),
Pevsner: Through Outsider’s Eyes (2016) and
An Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (2013) on the polymath Buckminster Fuller; as well as two seasons of The Design Dimension, a series on design and society.

He regularly appears on broadcast media as
a design, urbanism and architecture expert. Appearances include: Channel 4 News, BBC News, BBC Radio 4 (Saturday Review, Loose Ends, Saturday Live, Front Row, Start the Week, Profile), BBC Radio 3 (Nightwaves), BBC Radio 6 Music (The Lauren Laverne Show), BBC2 (The Genius of Design, Building the Dream: the 2012 Olympics, Christmas University Challenge, Celebrity Eggheads, The Chelsea Flower Show) and Channel 5 (The Wright Stuff).