What is the purpose of the dining room
The most obvious answer to the question is a place to eat but it goes far beyond the functional aspects. As mentioned earlier dining room often depicts the true nature of family - how it operates, how it put forward it ideas and what is its outlook toward the wider world. For example if the family is highly collaborative then often dining room act as a place to not only eat but also where activities can be done especially in homes where there is a provision for home office. Members of the family come out of their work zones and do collaborative work over the dining table and discuss ideas in the area.
In various households dining area is a playful area especially households with small kids. So the key is to provide enough space for kids to run around the table and chair and designing the closets in a way that can keep precious decoration pieces away from the reach of the kids is extremely essential. This is in complete contrast to home office environment where dining room is to be designed in a way where everything is within an arm reach and people utilize the surrounding spaces to stock things that are often used for discussions like rows of neat and tidy shelves to put important files and other work related stuff.
Based on above discussed functionality or aesthetic a home designer can go ahead with designing the dining room. In one of my latest project I had to redesign a young family home for home office as the mother of kids was planning to open her own advertising business from home. She was planning to hire two employees and her challenge was to find a right balance between a home office dining room and space where she can spend quality time with kids during the day.
Our Designing Solution
My solution involved replacing the rectangular table with a round table thus increasing the running around space for kids and at the same time creating a space where small meeting of four people can be done in a very interactive way. The lighting was also redesigned based on the work requirements too. One of the closets was removed to create more wall space thus providing space for work presentations. The feedback is that kids enjoy watching cartoons on projector in night so it seems that I covered all the bases. Regarding the closet to keep files, we made the decision to keep them in office so that they remain off-limits to the kids.
