If you ask most Londoners what they remember from last week, rain, rain…and more rain would probably be the main topic of discussion.

So, with spring time misery infiltrating our affairs, it was with an extra skip in our step that we made our way to Grand Designs Live last week, to check out the UK’s leading contemporary homes show and our very own East Village experiential pod. With over a gargantuan 500 exhibitors, including us, Grand Designs Live was staged at London’s ExCel Centre from the 5th until the 13th of this month.

We popped down last Wednesday to investigate the East Village stand for ourselves. You may well have already seen Kevin McCloud enjoying himself aboard our East Village bicycle:

If you’ve not seen or heard about our East Village pod until now, it is a specially designed interactive cube that allows you to experience East Village in a unique way.

Inside the pod, you can jump on our bike, start pedalling and take a virtual tour through East Village on the screen in front of you:

You could get interactive on the outside walls too: peak through one of our several peep holes and you’d get a detailed insight into the surrounding areas of East Village, including Hackney Marshes, and Stratford for example, with running commentary to inform you along the way.

It’s interactive on the outside walls too: peek through one of several peep holes and you get a detailed insight into the surrounding areas of East Village, including Hackney Marshes, and Stratford for example, with running commentary to inform you along the way. Inside the pod, you could feast your eyes on a mural documenting an array of infographics detailing some cool facts about East Village, such as the ones seen below:

After burning off some steam on the bike, we took a welcome seat for the East Village seminar at the main stage, with guest speakers, East Village architect Jonathan Kendall, of Fletcher Priest Architects, Elliot Lipton, Director of Triathlon Homes, QDD’s Stuart Corbyn and Jay Merrick, Architecture Critic of The Independent.

During the seminar, it was great to listen to first-hand accounts of the East Village project, from the people who actually designed the site almost ten years ago now. Jonathan Kendall emphasised the importance of the landscape at East Village, as well as the architecture.

Did you manage to make it to Grand Designs Live this year? As always, we’d love to hear from you, so do get in touch and let us know if you got on the East Village bike!