Eco-living Centre

The centre will offer practical solutions to make it easier for residents to embrace sustainable living.

Using a team of specialists led by renowned architect Gregory Burgess, the Eco-living Centre has been designed to showcase practical solutions that make it easier for the community to embrace sustainable living.

Project overview

As part of the Camberwell Centre project the Camberwell Library will be relocated from its current temporary home to a purpose built facility. The current library location, which is a council owned house, will be remodelled to become the Boroondara Eco-living Centre.

This exciting project will demonstrate sustainable design principles and technologies and support sustainable living behaviours in our community. The centre will deliver Council's Living for our Future program and host a range of activities such as guided tours, informative displays, school visits, workshops and presentations.

You will be able to visit the centre to watch solar hot water and greywater systems in action, see into walls and floors to learn about building materials, participate in vegetable and fruit-growing and lots more!

The centre will also provide a meeting space for community and environment groups.

Our vision for the centre is that it becomes a thriving hub of learning and change, a valued resource offering practical solutions that make it easier for communities to live more sustainably.

A flexible and sustainable design

The centre has been designed to include a number of ESD features including:

solar hot water panels
photovoltaic solar panels
linoleum
recycled bricks
energy and water efficient appliances.

Spaces have been designed to showcase different solutions for your home as be functional within the centre. For example:

The home office will be a demonstration area as well as serving as an e-hub for learning and a reference library. It will also be a place for centre users to sit and read.
The kitchen and open plan area will be multi-functional with capabilities for cooking classes, gatherings and seminars where modular furniture and potentially moveable walls can be used to change the shape of the space and highlight different technologies.

A picture of the centre's design is provided below or pdf's highlighting different information for various user groups are located at the bottom of the page.

Keeping the community Informed

In April 2010, members of local environmental community groups were invited to join council officers and the consulting team to workshop key design elements to be included in the centre. The feedback from this session informed the above design which was finalised mid-2011.
A community workshop was also held in November 2011 for feedback generally but with a focus on operations and programs to be run out of the centre and we have been asking for feedback at our events.

Comments so far have included:
• "Make it fun! Entertaining and informative"
• "More hands on workshops would be great"
• "Capture the 'Nanna technology'"
• "I would visit and revisit if the centre was staffed by sustainability consultants"