Do Australian homes need the formal dining room? He Said/She Said
Are formal dining rooms requisite in new build homes?
That's the discussion topic this Australia Day weekend around our barbecues, our property commentators Jonathan Chancellor and Margie suggest. He says no, she says yes to their continuation.
HE SAYS 
Formal dining rooms are almost a thing of the past - gone with the nightly whole of family dinners and the special Sunday roasts around the formal table.
But Margie's deep love of the formal dining room makes her the perfect dinner party guest for the uncompromising historian, Dr James Broadbent, reminising about the days of our pioneer settlers over cucumber sandwiches at his intact 1809 home, The Cottage, Mulgoa.
Perhaps recalling the shipment by William Charles Wentworth in 1845 of his imposing Gothic oak sideboard for the dining room at Vaucluse House.
The darkened formal dining rooms date back to those London-originating pattern books for Australian domestic use that started to fall from favour around the time we released they didn't come with the requisite verandah.
Australian homes now embrace openness and light, although the need and success of a formal dining room can depend on its size of the house and location.
I'd suggest Bishopscourt in Darling Point will always need one, for instance, no matter who becomes its next owner.
The dining room at Bishopscourt, Darling Point.
But it's now all about the pursuit of function over form these days with the vast Vaucluse house (pictured below) recently completed by Andrew Ipkendanz the current scene stopper. It is up for sale through Alison Coopes.
Its open-plan kitchen, living and dining area, looking squarely down the harbour, is ideal for relaxed Australian-style dining, however the lack of any formal dining room in the Carrara Road home has been described by some as an "idiosyncrasy."
{yoogallery src=[images/stories/2014/01/23/vau1]}
Indeed its absence could be a sales sticking point, one prestige agent has suggested.
“There’s a type of buyer who will say that having a formal dining room is a requirement they’re not prepared to compromise on. It’s a gamble,” Christie’s agent Ken Jacobs says.
Ipkendanz acknowledged in a recent Australian Financial Review article the no fomal dining room decision was a “big departure” from the norm, but having lived and built in locations around the world as far spread as Brazil, Italy, France’s St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and London, he was adamant the home had been built the way a home located in Sydney, Australia, should be.
{yoogallery src=[images/stories/2014/01/23/vau2]}
“I just don’t think people in this environment need a formal dining room. We’ve got a kitchen table that is five metres long and a huge outdoor terrace. I know when they use the home they’ll realise the kitchen and living space is so magnificent, it’s the only place they’ll want to be,” he said.
Of course there is a vast caterer's kitchen carefully planned to be close to the dining table, yet out of sight.
SHE SAID
I have a penchant for formal dining rooms. But I agree with Jonathan, a formal dining room in a home depends on its size of the house and location.
For instance, big beach houses typically don’t need a formal dining room – an open-plan kitchen and spacious dining zone is much better suited to a modern beach house.
Formal dining rooms suit large modern suburban homes and those in rural lifestyle areas, like the Southern Highlands and Mount Macedon. Sitting down to dinner with family and friends in a room specifically designed for eating and entertaining (and separate to the kitchen) is not only enjoyable, but also provides a sense of style and occasion.
With contemporary residences, a formal dining room doesn’t need to have four walls - it can open from the formal sitting area, or indeed flow onto a large outdoor terrace.
But I can’t imagine owning a Toorak or Bellevue Hill mansion and not having a formal dining room.
Certainly formal dinners are a traditional social obligatory among owners of large homes on Sydney’s upper North Shore, which is the domain of the NSDP (North Shore Dinner Party). In this neck of the woods, where good restaurants are few and far between, couples emulate Martha Stewart (or Nigella Lawson before her recent divorce) by hosting friends at carefully planned three or four course dinners in the formal dining rooms of their homes.
Currently for sale in Pymble Road, Pymble are a series of four new residences - two with formal dining rooms (82A and 82B) and two (82C and 82D) without. Each measuring about 350 square metres internally, these large Pymble homes are for sale at $2.8 to $2.9 million through Jenny Zhang of Century 21 West Pacific.
Granted however with smaller new houses, formal dining rooms don’t feature.
Home World’s website provides pictures, descriptions and floorplans for a wide range of new open plan residences including Masterton Homes’ double-storey Merlot Elite. Gone is the formal dining room, and in with the new norm including the downstairs home cinema and the upstairs lounge room.
{yoogallery src=[images/stories/2014/01/24/mer]}
As the Home World website says the Merlot offers the ultimate, imaginative use of space providing separate areas and zones which tick all the boxes required for family living; home theatre, secluded study, open-plan living and kitchen flowing onto al fresco dining and entertaining and a fantastic family bedroom and living upper floor area.
Over the years, I’ve seen a wide array of formal dining rooms, mostly in grand mansions and penthouses on the north shore and in the eastern suburbs.
Among the most impressive were the Joye's dining room at Barford, Bellevue Hill. The Princeton penthouse, Double Bay – decked out by doyen Leslie Walford - was also special. I simply adored the dining room formality of this mansion while visiting Bali recently (pictured below), away from the coast amid paddy fields. And of course the one in the as yet unsold Bishopscourt in Darling Point where I snapped jonathan recently!
