According to Zdzisław Najder, "Amy Foster" was inspired partly by an anecdote in Ford Madox Ford's The Cinque Ports (1900), wherein a shipwrecked sailor from a German merchant ship, unable to communicate in English, and driven away by the local country people, finally found shelter in a pigsty.
Most episodes take place in a conventional home or condo space, although the firm and the series have also taken on projects in a boathouse, a yurt, a hotel room, a Toronto restaurant, a converted pigsty, a baseball player's luxury suite at the Rogers Centre, and Toronto's Carlu theatre and event space.