Old Managers Cottage at Narara Ecovillage

The old managers cottage is one of the original buildings on the sixty four hectare site that was once a CSIRO research station before it became Narara Ecovillage. When the ecovillage community acquired the land, several existing structures came with it, each carrying decades of institutional history in their walls. This cottage, where the station manager once lived, needed to become a genuine family home while respecting its significance within the community's story.

Heritage renovation requires restraint. The temptation is always to gut the building and start fresh behind the original facade, but that approach hollows out the very thing that makes the building worth keeping. Instead, I worked with what was there. The original floor plan, with its generous room proportions and high ceilings, was largely retained. Where walls were removed to open up the kitchen and living area, we salvaged the timber and reused it as shelving and joinery details elsewhere in the house.

The cottage's orientation was not ideal for passive solar performance, having been designed in an era when energy was cheap and buildings were heated with whatever was available. I improved the thermal envelope without altering the exterior: additional insulation in the roof cavity, draught sealing around the original timber windows, and new double glazed units in the rear extension where the original windows had already been replaced at some point. A north facing deck was added to the back of the house, creating an outdoor room that captures winter sun and connects to the ecovillage's communal gardens beyond.

Living within Narara Ecovillage means being part of a resident owned cooperative, and the renovation had to satisfy the community's design guidelines as well as the usual planning requirements. The finished cottage sits comfortably among the newer ecovillage homes, its older bones visible but its interiors thoroughly modern. There is something satisfying about giving a building a second life rather than replacing it, and this cottage earned that chance.