Two Cottages—Renovated Using Less Than $150K—Embrace Living With Kenya’s Wildlife

A six-month project, designer Naeem Biviji thought when he first saw the pair of 1950s cottages in a roughly one-acre compound in Nairobi that he and his wife, Bethan Rayner, hoped to refurbish rapidly. Instead, it took them 15 years.

In 2004, Naeem and Bethan, who had recently completed architecture degrees in Scotland, weren’t too concerned about shaping a home for themselves. However, Naeem’s parents had acquired the cottages, which were close to their home in Nairobi’s Westlands area, where he grew up. He and Bethan, who is English, decided to fix them up the following year. They set up Studio Propolis, their design/build office and furniture workshop, in Nairobi’s industrial area and soon got to work.

Originally built for a postal worker and a groundskeeper, the colonial cottages looked neglected. Nonetheless, the rectangular stone-masonry structures, totaling about 1,480 square feet, were picturesque. Plastered and painted white, with red clay tiles covering their wood-framed hip roofs, and perched beside the forested Karura nature preserve, they seemed far from the city.

"This was not a linear design process. This was a hands-on, handmade process."

—Naeem Biviji, designer and resident