Modernism at McDonald's - Dwell Blog

McDonald’s has come up with what it's calling a new "design formula" to lure its customers that have become increasingly design-savvy (according to the company's researcher in Europe at least) into its location on Eltham High Street in southeast London. The fast food joint now looks less like the home of Ronald McDonald and more like the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen. The restaurant is kitted out with Arne Jacobsen Series 7 dining chairs, as well as Swan and Egg chairs, which made their debut at the SAS Royal in 1958. As people vote with their feet, the company will continue to expand the "reimaging" program across Europe.

If Jacobsen’s love of subtlety and organic forms seems like a clash with plastic golden arches, consider the design critic Alice Rawsthorn’s question in her September 23 article in the Style & Design section of the International Herald Tribune: “If the modernist goal is to make "good design" available to as many people as possible, isn't it a triumph for Jacobsen's elegant chairs to seat the masses for a mass-market brand like McDonald's? Or is the company ridiculing the ideals of Jacobsen and his fellow modernists by relegating those chairs to the role of corporate marketing props, especially as they are props for one of the most demonized corporations of our time?”

Regardless of the answer, in late August The New York Times reported that the European "reimaging" campaign (which includes nine redesigns for franchises to choose from, of which the Jacobsen model is one) seems to be paying off: "In the first half of this year, combined sales at Europe’s 6,400 restaurants rose 15 percent, to $4.1 billion, compared with a 6 percent increase in the United States, where McDonald’s has 13,800 restaurants and sales totaled $3.9 billion."

So what do you think? Would you be happily surprised by a Swan chair at a rest stop off of Exit 67? Or would you take it as a sign of something sinister?

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Posted by: Chelsea Holden Baker on Oct 1, 07 at 06:00 PM PDT

Permalink | 4 Comments

I take it just another different tactic of running business. On the bright side, it helps to give one a better appetite. ;)

Posted by Ian Yang on 10/14/07 09:02PM PDT

I'm with Jas - the campaign (and McDonald's itself, frankly) disgusts me.

Posted by Emily S. on 10/06/07 07:54AM PDT

You can dress up a pig, but it's still a pig.

Posted by Jas on 10/03/07 11:40AM PDT

Makes me hungry for some Ikea meatballs.

Posted by podophile on 10/01/07 10:54PM PDT