The Rise and Fall of Fast Food Architecture

have you noticed that McDonald's just looks I don't know a little bit different lately gone is the distinctive look of the restaurants from when I was a kid like the Red mansard Roost or those yellow aluminum rigged things that look like giant french fries today McDonald's restaurants are mostly gray featureless rectangular block structures maybe with some cement board panels an awning maybe a little corrugated metal at the top and if you're lucky there's a vertical element to hold the iconic golden arches logo in fact it's often difficult to distinguish between a McDonald's from say a Burger King or a Wendy's on the exact same Suburban strip fast food architecture is converging I guess this strikes me as art given that my childhood memories at McDonald's buildings or that they're just so iconic and I know that not all McDonald's looked like the one that I'm thinking of The Originals had those giant Yellow arches and angled roofs but either way the architecture of the restaurant was a distinctive and essential part of the brand that just no longer seems to be the case well this is going to be a story about McDonald's I think it's indicative of a larger set of Trends a process that began as a race to distinguish a brand and customer experience through its building design has turned into something else entirely you can see the evolution right at this site here in Chicago which used to be the home of the Rock and Roll McDonald's used to be one of those standard red roofed buildings then there was this throwback design a super-sized replica of the golden arched 1950s structure to what's here now a modern glass box that's sheltered with a metal shaving vise this building looks like it could have been a museum in Texas but instead it's serving Burgers here in Chicago well I do think this is a good building it's a sustainable mission is great it even achieved lead Platinum rating it has me thinking about this Evolution and it's only a specific example of what can be seen in lots of different places why were early fast food structures so iconic and distinctive and what's causing them to look well just more generic today why isn't the goal of having a distinctive architectural identity part of what makes retail experience unique anymore there's a complex and interesting relationship between the evolution of McDonald's restaurants and broader cultural and Architectural motivations of the day we can see these parallel processes forming together all the way back to the 1900s when the automobile presented new challenges and opportunities to both Architects and restaurant tours with customers arriving to their dining experience by car there was a potential to completely shift all the points of contact between the buildings employees and customers all of a sudden you needed parking which pushes the building back away from the street but the threshold of the exchange between customers exit the car enter the building order and receive Food and pay all this was up for grabs the entire sequence could be questioned and rethought and this had a hugely significant consequence for the building's design drive-throughs and Drive-ins developed during the 1920s with the Pig Stand dining for drivers that were to quote one restaurant tour at the time too lazy to get out of their cars to enter the restaurant during this development phase of the brand new building type the problem of buildings cars and food was largely a problem-solving exercise and an exploration to discover new efficiencies the layout of these pick stands was octagonal to allow fluid movement of cars around the structure or to present the maximum number of sides for customers to be able to engage at around the same time Architects like lokobusier dedicated themselves to folding cars into the building the Villa Savoy from 1931 for example brings the car right into and underneath the house even the shape of the first floor is dictated by the turning radius of an automobile if you compare the plans of the Villa Savoy with a contemporary McDonald's drive-through the similarity is pretty clear after this initial problem-solving stage more entrepreneurs wanted in on the drive-through action a trailer with a lot of money to be made more competitors sprouted up and the Pig Stand owners looked to design to distinguish themselves from the pack this meant bigger and taller signage as well as unique aesthetic themes Art Deco was popular at the time with the streamlined futuristic forums and its bright colors like this example of Carpenters sandwiches dedicated in art deco style it looks like it fell right out of the film Metropolis the goal is to make the largest visual impact from the greatest distance possible through large bold and vibrant forms also associating the brand with technology in the future was strategic in order to distinguish itself as a new dining format from the old traditional experiences this is the time that McDonald's began their first restaurant and the resemblance to the pig stands or the carpenter sandwich shop is pretty clear it has the same octagonal shape the large sign and the wraparound counter it also projects the roof beyond the footprint of the building to create a more layered experience between the inside and the outside where the building kind of captures you it's important to the McDonald's Brothers to maintain an unbroken visual relationship between the customers into the kitchen the kitchen itself was carefully considered for both its efficiency and the display that it created it turned the work of making the product into a spectacle and the transparency yielded a closer connection between the product's preparation and the customer they arrived at this Solution by marking out the kitchen with chalk on a tennis court and then rehearsing until they got it right the process is featured with a crane shot in the movie the founder it's a great example of design thinking finding the right spatial and design Solutions through testing and feedback the desire for increased transparency was another thing that was in the air at the time accelerated by advances in glass production in other architectural contexts like house design there was also rampant experimentation with new glass Technologies to increase the transparency between the inside and the outside experiments like Philip Johnson's Glass House imagine the home is a completely transparent Pavilion fully visually connected to the surrounding landscape by 1953 McDonald's were building their third restaurant and they engaged architect Stanley Clark mestin to conceive of a new design that took the lessons of the previous two and to elevate it to new heights part of this is literal to create a taller structure for an activity that mainly just takes place on the ground the height is purely to make the building stand out to people who are driving by in cars from some distance away at high speeds at this stage they introduced the red and yellow coloring and of course the iconic arches these solved a few problems first Dick McDonald didn't want the building to have a flat roof which is largely invisible to the street steady wanted the roof to angle toward the street showcasing the interior to the outside The Arches pick up the structural load of that projecting Eve which rotates inside of it and probably and most importantly The Arches go tall when the space itself isn't that tall increasing the visibility of the building from afar by 1961 McDonald's rebranded their overall logo to feature an oblique view of their iconic restaurant design you have the two arches that are overlapping one another until it forms a letter M which is then pierced by the angled roof so the logo itself is actually an interpretation of the architecture as it would have been seen while moving down the street the building came first and then the brand logo second this kind of thing fascinated Architects like Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown they observed that for these auto-centric buildings the sign was just as important if not more important than the building for doing the work of engaging the customer of course the sign can be a separate element or the sign in the building might be the same thing as is the case with McDonald's this is the premise for Gucci architecture or other roadside attractions where the shape of the building is the product or the brand by the 1960s McDonald's rebranded yet again and then substituted the roof line from the logo with the word written out as McDonald's this is also when they introduced that mansard roof design the first example was located nearby in Matson Illinois the roof shape recalls the original restaurant with a projecting Eve but it also provides a tall space above the ceiling of the interior in order to hide the mechanical elements on the roof without looking awkward those Architects from before Robert Venturian Denise Scott Brown also took a pass out to design for a restaurant in the 1980s theirs is a basic box with all kinds of giant iconic McDonald's elements including a Happy Meal a soft drink and the golden arches M logo so the logo actually goes from being a structural part of the building to becoming the brand Mark which could be printed on anything and then back into the building but not as a structural piece just as a big sign their design also has a giant happy meal at the back which is totally funny because it has the M logo as the handles of the box so that thing gained a new function for your fingers to grab the box but that's not how they work because it's just too big there are so many layers to how this works out during this time these playful buildings could also be justified as appealing to Children Mark Mohler chef and restaurant consultant confirms that the original thought with restaurants like McDonald's was to aim at a family audience so you could get customers for life that's what drove the playgrounds and the toys all very kid-friendly stuff either way during these times there was a Synergy between what was happening with the fast food industry and architecture at large questions of the automobile transparency and signage were big questions that lots of people were thinking about but that was to change as all of these began to diverge over time McDonald's has shifted its focus was started as a progressive and forward-thinking solution started to look dated or maybe even a little silly while I was able to continue under the guise of appealing to children today the focus is more squarely on adults they even have an adult Happy Meal on the menu the design includes clean lines and colors that will appeal to you while you're eating no more of those hard chairs that are designed to get people up and out for the sake of throughput they try to make it comfortable so that older adults from 30 to 60 can go in and feel comfortable enjoying the fast food that they grew up on in a more welcoming environment in addition these kinds of restaurants are also just cheaper and easier to build and we're building so many every potential saving counts a unique building means that it's more expensive to build and harder to sell later the homogenization of fast food restaurants towards the standard has been called the Chipotle Vacation by Glenn Cobin a restaurant architects he contends that one thing that I've learned in the industry is that fast food restaurants are essentially just designed in a lab to produce the biggest returns possible when I look at fast food restaurants today it's exactly what they look like they are soulless you wouldn't know it by looking at it but this is actually McDonald's Global headquarters it's a nine-story steel and brick and glass building located in the area of Chicago called the West Loop this area has a lot of large Brick Warehouse buildings from the days when it supplied food to the city and the region now it's an historic district to try and maintain the character of its history the McDonald's building designed by The Firm Gensler fits into the area with its material palette and gridded windows this makes it look passingly similar to some of the older buildings of the area as well as strikingly similar to newer ones built for things like Google or hotels while the building does do a good job of blending into the neighborhood there's nothing that screams that this building is dedicated to McDonald's it's also part of a conscious choice and the change in Direction the headquarters used to be a nearby suburb called Oak Lawn and the move was all part of the maturing of the brand and look I get it this is actually the neighborhood that I live in it's great it's well served by public transit and it seems that McDonald's is Shifting Gears from its Automotive Roots even walking the walk by moving their headquarters to an urban location becoming more sustainable in addition to being more adult oriented but I just wonder if Brands like McDonald's could do this with designs that aren't so Bland and undistinguished Brands like these build a lot of buildings and while generic might be good for the bottom line isn't necessarily good architecture or good for the environment while the subdued palette can work on the interior the Montage of distorted signs on the exterior leads to a muddied message and I'm not calling for nostalgic Throwbacks but it doesn't have to be so you know soulless many of these restaurants went from Bold choices that stood out from the crowd with a childlike Spirit but today they're content with just fitting in and that just isn't enough this video was made possible by the support of morning brew and if I'm honest the start of all of my days are made possible with the support of morning Brew which is a daily newsletter delivered to you on Monday through Sunday it gets you up to speed on business finance and Tech in just about five minutes every morning with witty and relevant information that you need to start your day before morning Brew I had 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Channel: Stewart Hicks

Views: 1,558,004

Keywords: architecture, design, architecture student, architecture design, architecture lecture for beginners, architecture 101, architecture documentary, architecture concept, architecture theory, stewart hicks, architecture talk, urban design, chicago, fast food, mcdonalds, restaurant

Id: 2p43Bslh9v0

Length: 13min 33sec (813 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 03 2022