October 9, 2024
McDonald’s Reimagines its Interiors through Radical Circular Design
At Belgium’s inaugural McDonald’s in Beurs is a bronze wall plaque that states the year it was founded: 1978, the same decade the oil crisis brought into question the reliance on plastics in manufacturing furnishings. After a recent refurbishment, however, few other signs of the ’70s remain, as McDonald’s is looking beyond its brown mansard roofs of the past toward a more ecologically conscious future.
The Beurs branch follows in the footsteps of two earlier circular pilot projects in France, designed by Antwerp-based studio WeWantMore, helmed by Ruud Belmans and Thomas Vanden Abeele. WeWantMore’s multidisciplinary approach, working both as interior designers and as brand consultants, allowed the team to integrate McDonald’s global identity with cutting-edge sustainability practices developed by the firm’s materials research team.
Creating a New Framework for Life Cycle Analysis (LCA)
The life cycle of the project’s interior furnishings and surfaces was measured and tracked through an index created by ecological sustainability consultancy Anthesis. The design strategies consist of easy-to-disassemble furnishings that lack powder coating and laminates that make materials notoriously hard to recycle. Assembled with mechanical fixings rather than glue, the items can be easily deconstructed by local crews and reused as raw materials. Recycled coffee grounds are used for the tabletops for the tables at the McCafé. One hundred percent of the plastic used in tabletops and stools is made from recycled content, as well as all of the plastic used in the restaurant’s chairs. Eighty percent of the wood used in the restaurant is PEFC certified, and the floor and ceilings are Cradle to Cradle certified. One goal of this experiment is for McDonald’s to eventually create a “take-back” program with materials suppliers.
One challenge that WeWantMore faced in the design process was the issue of durability. They experimented with resilient elements like the scratch-resistant tabletops that protect the tables’ surface and color from damage by food trays and daily cleaning agents. “All of these materials have to go through all of the heavy testing that McDonald’s does,” says Belmans.
Despite an intentionality in letting the materials speak for themselves as sustainable, this eco-friendliness is not all in-your-face. “We didn’t want to do any flag-waving,” says Silke Korporal, head of global design at McDonald’s, “so we didn’t advertise a sustainable decor inside the design. We just wanted it to be.
Would you like to comment on this article? Send your thoughts to: [email protected]
Latest
Projects
One River North is Denver’s New Nod to Biophilia
MAD Architects inserted a four-story canyon of landscaped terraces into a slick mixed-use development.
Projects
This Botanical Garden’s New Addition Is as Subtle as Light and Shadow
Whispers of texture and nature pull visitors through the Missouri Botanical Garden’s new visitor center and into the landscape beyond.