DINNER PLAIN CELEBRATES 30 YEARS OF STUNNING ALPINE ARCHITECTURE
As the first snowflakes fall on the multi-leveled pitched rooftops of Dinner Plain’s iconic houses this winter, the residents will be celebrating more than just the start of the ski season: this architectural marvel of alpine Australia is turning 30 years old. Dinner Plain is, without a doubt, one of Australia’s most distinctive planned communities. When it comes to architecture and vision, there is nothing quite like it anywhere else in the country, says Malcolm Macpherson, a longterm resident who is currently penning a book on the history of Dinner Plain. Macpherson says the uniqueness of the village – with its strict design specifications that echo the cattlemen’s heritage of the High Country, paired with an alpine landscape rare in the Australian environment – were key elements inspiring visionary architect Peter McIntyre’s early design for the village. “His idea was that the buildings would blend in with the landscape,” Macpherson says. “Built of stone, timber and corrugated iron and often boasting magnificent stone fireplaces, each blends in beautifully with the surrounding snow gums and the high plains.” McIntyre’s vision became a reality in 1986 when the iconic Dinner Plain Hotel opened its doors to the public. And the rest is history. “No one else has actually taken a greenfield site and built a whole 5000-bed village in Australia since the Gold Rush, so it was a pretty unique project,” says Peter McIntyre, the architect and ‘founding father’ of Dinner Plain.
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Dinner Plain’s unique character owes much to the level of control McIntyre had over the early stages of development, which is now primarily represented in the eastern side of the village. He achieved something new to Australian architecture – a village with a sense of unity, but without repetitiveness. “Now you get that in a European village of four or five-hundred years old, and it happened then because the materials were limited; they could only get materials that were available to them within a short distance,” McIntyre explains. “Everyone did their own building, so there were individual designs, but they all used the same material.” To achieve this in a modern environment, McIntyre deployed a never-before-used method to control development where blocks of land were sold to buyers along with a contract to build a specific house designed by McIntyre to meet their needs. Each house was different, energy efficient and orientated north while taking the surrounding houses into account so that each was placed nicely. Importantly, each house used a limited palette of materials as well as colours inspired by those found in the surrounding snow gums. “It was an attempt to establish an Australian alpine character… and at the same time show their origins of the alpine architecture that existed, which was basically primitive-type buildings like cattlemen’s huts,” he says. And it was a significant achievement. In 1987, the year after the first buildings opened to the public in Dinner Plain, McIntyre won Australia’s top architecture award – the Royal Australian
Institute of Architects (RAIA) Sir Zelman Cowen Medal – for the design of Dinner Plain Alpine Village. The only award to rank higher – the RAIA Gold Medal, awarded to architects on the basis of their life’s work – was bestowed upon McIntyre three years later in 1990. Today, although McIntyre no longer designs the houses, the strict design specifications that make Dinner Plain so intimate and architecturally unique continue to inspire the buildings. The western side of the village has continued to evolve, with different architects adding their stamp to McIntyre’s original vision. Its wonderful atmosphere has helped it to become a family favourite for winter escapes and also a popular spot for hikers and tourers along the Great Alpine Road in summer, and it remains the only freehold land above the snowline. A handful of residents even live there year round.
“It’s always had a special feel about it,” says resident Fiona Magnussen. Magnussen first visited Dinner Plain in 1989, returning frequently before building a house there eight years later. “The first time when I came it was really quite small,” she remembers. “It was the architecture that blew you away; the way it’s nestled in between the trees.” The other attraction was the peace and quiet. Life at 1580 metres altitude is a true escape, says Magnussen.