Melbourne mansion owners accused of putting on facade for neighbours

IT’S the property fad sweeping Melbourne, and an architecture expert has slammed the whole thing is a “sham”.

AN ARCHITECTURE expert has seen past the facade put up by Melburnians increasingly buying French provincial mansions in the hope of impressing their neighbours.

The Australian newspaper today reported on a proliferation of the houses in Melbourne suburbs.

“It’s a popular style because it appears to exude history, respectability, apparent good taste. I think ‘apparent’ is the thing,” Melbourne University architecture professor Philip Goad told news.com.au in response.

“But it’s all a bit of a sham.

This French provincial home Melbourne’s eastern suburbs has a six-car garage. “A French provincial house never had a double-car garage in the facade,” Melbourne University Professor Philip Goad says. “A French provincial house never had a car.”

“From the street, it looks imposing and important and that someone of eminent means appears to live here.

“Once you get beyond the first few rooms, there’s nothing very special about it.

“There’ll be fake stone on the front, either as a facade material or as mouldings around the windows.

“They come with a garden that looks like a small cemetery at the front that requires no maintenance: clipped hedges, a few urns, perhaps a fountain.

“It’s faux French provincial. It’s almost sub-chateau.”

“A French provincial house is generally on a large country estate,” Professor Philip Goad says.

The professor said that actual, not faux, French provincial homes were more akin to a country farmhouse with a large garden than a suburban mansion built right up to the property’s boundary.

“A French country farm house won’t have this degree of allusions to grandeur. It will probably have shutter and relaxed informality and chooks running around,” he said.

Prof Goad likened the popularity of faux French provincial to the fad of Georgian mansions in Melbourne’s suburbs during the 1990s.