Season 2
SEASON 2 EPISODE 8
Sarah Lebner is the founder and director of Cooee Architecture, a sustainable residential practice based in the alpine region of south-east Australia, where she designs energy-efficient, low-carbon homes for rural and regional communities.
In this episode, we discuss bushfire-resilient design beyond codes, including defensible sites and landscape strategies, and contrast Australian mandates for rainwater tanks and firefighting reserves with U.S. approaches.“ It's very easy to create rules around how a building is built, but actually how you design the building and the site is probably even more important.”
—Sarah Lebner
We explore:
Cooee's 18 intentions approach to design
Why "leave and leave early" isn't the whole bushfire story in a regional community
NatHERS, Australia's national home energy rating tool
The $9,000 retrofit that paid for itself in five years
Why Australia legislates rainwater collection while parts of the American West have restricted it
How much water a self-sufficient rural Australian property actually needs on site
The "PAC" process, and why Sarah wants landscape designers brought in the same way builders are
Cooee is a word for calling out across a distance. Sarah picked it when she moved back to the family farm, to call out to the people building around her and ask them to work toward something lower carbon, together. This episode is one more version of that call, and we're glad you're here to hear it.
Sarah Lebner is the founder and director of Cooee Architecture, a sustainable residential practice based in the alpine region of south-east Australia, where she designs energy-efficient, low-carbon homes for rural and regional communities. Before returning to the area she grew up in, Sarah was Principal Architect at Light House Architecture and Science in Canberra, one of Australia's leading building science practices, where she spent years working at the intersection of passive design, thermal performance, and affordability. She is the author of 101 Things I Didn't Learn in Architecture School, a 2023 recipient of the Australian Institute of Architects Dulux Study Tour Prize, and the sole winner of the Institute's 2020 National Emerging Architect Prize. Alongside her architectural work, Sarah runs Cooee's scalable resources arm, creating affordable tools and guides to help everyday homeowners retrofit their homes for comfort and efficiency.
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