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Photography courtesy of Cure Design Group, designed by CURE Senior Designer Cori Dyer
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Photography courtesy of Cure Design Group, designed by CURE Senior Designer Cori Dyer
Should a dining table be a long stretch of polished mahogany in a darkened room, or a sunlit mango wood table close enough to the kitchen to hear the sauce simmer? While the loyalists huddle in what’s left of the traditional dining room, its walls are toppling. Even in Downton Abbey’s homeland, a 2015 Lloyds survey found that one in three homes already had an open kitchen-dining floor plan—and one-third of all work being done on period properties was to create one.
You can blame the lure of electronic screens, the lost art of conversation, and the sloth of takeout. Or you can praise families who want to be together even when they’re multitasking—and don’t want to quarantine large spaces for a few days’ use. Instead, all sorts of combinations are emerging: Big farmhouse kitchens where kids who’ve never rinsed a turnip do homework on a rustic wooden table. Dinner parties at an oak library table surrounded by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A family room open to the kitchen so the cook’s part of the fun, not banging pots and pans in martyred solitude.
“But how can a house be a home without a dining room?” traditionalists wail. “Holidays won’t feel special!” (And who wants their guests to see the dirty pots and pans—or hear the cook cursing?)
“This is always a difficult issue,” says architect Phil Durham, “because people have to be honest about the reality of their lifestyles. Many people think they are going to throw many elaborate dinner parties but, like most of us, never do. Unless you own one of the great pieces of housing stock here in town that has a formal dining room, I usually advocate eliminating the dedicated room and going to a more casual arrangement of furniture.”
Still, Kim Stock at Dau Furniture says that plenty of young couples walk in and fall in love with a Stickley dining set. “They’re reverting to what their grandparents had,” adds her colleague Christy North.
So are we talking death or resurrection?
“I say death,” announces Paige McClellan, a residential designer at UIC, “or at least a moratorium. We had a little debate here, because some people still love that formality. It’s not gone, I said—it’s just been eaten alive by the kitchen! Everybody wants an open plan. Families want to be interacting in a more natural way.”
McClellan’s solution is a flip: The dining room becomes a family room connected to the kitchen, with a cozy table for family meals or homework or games, and the living room becomes an entertaining space that includes a dining table. Isn’t that too far from the kitchen to serve? “The way people host at home now, everything’s usually set up ahead of time on a sideboard,” she points out. “For smaller multicourse dinners, they’ll opt for a restaurant.”
And the dirty pots dilemma? “I like to arrange it so you can see part of the kitchen but not where all the dishes are—maybe a strategically placed 4-foot sectional wall and a deep sink!”
The team at CURE Design Group also argued the topic: Some love the traditional dining room for its sense of occasion and its simplicity. A gorgeous tablescape becomes the focal point; food and conversation are the only entertainment. But others like the flexibility of a room that’s open to the kitchen but has space for a big table and buffet. That way, guests can either get involved in the prep or stay out of the cook’s way, and the cook can join the conversation instead of slaving away in another room.
Sometimes practical considerations settle the question: A kitchen can’t be opened up, or a new villa doesn’t have a dining room in the first place. In new homes, though, some architects are building kitchens with islands large enough to function as dining tables, says Durham. “I have even seen them run a stone counter/table to the exterior to allow for indoor/outdoor dining.”
Derek Hoeferlin, an architect who teaches at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, has a client with a young family—and an old St. Louis house. They put a round Saarinen Tulip table in their formal dining room for family dinners. Now they also want “a new type of kitchen and blended eating area that connects to the outdoors.
“We interact in different ways” now, Hoeferlin points out. “We’re doing multiple things at once, for better or for worse. The architecture should reflect this multiplicity.”
So is it entirely uncivilized when we’re eating half our dinners on the couch in front of the TV or unpacking takeout at a kitchen island? Hoeferlin’s not sure it even matters, as long as the food’s healthy and there’s still a chance for good conversation. “I think what matters most is that rooms should be used as much as possible. The meta-question is really ‘Can formality sustain itself?’”
It’s no longer the default.
