Regional Lifestyle Magazine: Excellence by Design

Regional Lifestyle Magazine's Snowy Valleys and Upper Murray edition has just come out, and it includes a feature on our family and on Cooee. It's not really a project piece. It's a story about coming home.

We had a lot of fun capturing photos for the story with Chloe Mitchell, showing three generations with the horses by the Murray River, and it paints a heartfelt picture of why Cooee exists here. When John stepped into the next chapter of the family farm, I saw the chance to build something of my own alongside it, a regional practice grounded in performance, pragmatism and place. We came back to the Upper Murray in 2022 with our kids, and living here properly once again has sharpened my passion for regional sustainable homes and community projects. Rural clients live with climate extremes every day, and feel the volatility of our time more sharply than most urban dwellers. Resilience and adaptability aren’t dreamy aspirations; they’re reality.

The article traces the practice from more than a decade at Light House ArchiScience in Canberra, where I first got serious about measurable, evidence-based design, through to Cooee today: The Silos on one end, quiet family homes that simply work well on the other. Solar-passive principles, CSIRO-backed simulation modelling and genuine energy performance sit behind every project, whatever the budget.

If you're local, or considering a visit to our region, it's worth picking up a copy for the whole issue, not just our part of it.

Find stockists or order this edition at lifestylemagazine.net.au

Want to learn more about Cooee?

Check out these guest podcast episodes with Sarah.