Hasta La Ideas

McDonald’s restaurants in France will soon be kitted out with designer outdoor furniture by Patrick Norguet and Italian brand Alias.

Alias collaborated with French designer Patrick Norguet to produce 18 modular elements for use outside McDonald’s outlets across France.

The Côme furniture collection includes chairs, tables and benches as well as a standing light, a tempered glass screen and rubbish bins.

“The collection needed to be low-cost, robust, sensual and quick to develop,” Norguet told Dezeen.

“Very quickly I had this intuition that metal and pressed steel were the most intelligent materials for this project,” he added.

The combination of perforated metal and concrete echoes urban street furniture and creates a contrast between the lightweight seat and the heavy mass of the base.

“The connection between the foot and the seat allows easy mounting [and] assembly and a possible replacement if necessary,” added Norguet.

The furniture has arrived at six restaurants so far with plans for a further rollout to 150 outlets across France over the next two to three years.

Norguet was commissioned by McDonald’s a year ago to redesign its restaurant interiors across France and earlier this year he also unveiled a set of reusable heatproof coffee cups made for the fast food chain.

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Here’s some more information from Alias:

The US fast food giant McDonald’s has chosen Alias, the historic Italian design brand, to furnish the outdoor areas of its restaurants worldwide as part of the “COME” project. Objective: to design, engineer, develop and install a specific turnkey modular furniture system. The company from Grumello del Monte has taken on this challenge with great enthusiasm, working together with the established French designer Patrick Norguet, with whom it established a highly successful relationship some time ago.

The first phase of the work will be carried out in France, with the first outdoor area already having been inaugurated in Bordeaux and a further six terraces installed in the north of the country. The entire project entails furnishing approximately 150 terraces and will be completed over the course of two to three years.

“Working in perfect harmony with the McDonald’s team and Patrick Norguet’s firm, we have succeeded in interpreting their ideas to the full: creating a personal, friendly and high quality outdoor space. A place where even a short break can provide an opportunity to relax and unwind. The plastic elegance and formal purity of each complement – a unique aspect of the designer’s style – are enhanced by the power and simplicity of the materials skilfully worked by Alias,” states the CEO and architect Renato Stauffacher.

The result is a modular furniture system open to numerous different yet coherent configurations, where small islands of greenery alternate with windscreens, tables of different dimensions and ergonomic, comfortable seating: 18 different elements, developed by Alias thanks to its years of experience in residential and community outdoor furniture, offering strong resistance, durability and easy maintenance.

Severe and highly contemporary sheet steel and cement are combined by means of expert techniques, then skilfully moulded to offer a sensation of comfort. In the seating, for example, the perforated sheet metal body which rests on the concrete base offers a gently pulsating surface which renders it immediately inviting and welcoming.

Alongside the seats, with and without arms, the benches and two-person tables consist of a cast concrete base and sheet metal top. The cement surfaces have all been sanded by hand, ensuring the highest possible levels of resistance to atmospheric agents. The four and six-person tables have a steel base. The windscreens are made from tempered and layered screen-printed glass.

There are also plans to build two roofs to provide shelter in the event of bad weather, outer barriers with an aluminium framework, lighting, steel ashtrays and bins with a Corian top to enhance the design, and a trio of flower pots with an attractively irregular shape.

The post Côme by Patrick Norguet and Alias
for McDonald’s appeared first on Dezeen.

Following the popularity of our story about a Starbucks designed by Kengo Kuma, here are some images of a concept store that the coffee-shop giant has completed inside a historic bank vault in Amsterdam.

Design director Liz Muller assembled a team of local artists and craftsmen to create features that include repurposed oak furniture, antique Delft tiles and wall coverings fashioned from the recycled inner tubes of old bicycle tyres.

Over 1800 individually cut wooden blocks make up the undulating ceiling, while the vault’s original marble and concrete floor has been restored and exposed.

A bakery is positioned at the rear of the store, while raised platforms provide stages for live music or poetry performances.

You can check out the Starbucks by Kengo Kuma and Associates here.

Photography is by Rien Meulman.

Here’s some more text from Starbucks:

Starbucks Coffee Experience ‘Laboratory’ to open at New Concept Store in Amsterdam

In a few weeks, Starbucks will open a new concept store in Amsterdam, but with its ‘Slow’Coffee Theatre, hyper local design, floating community gathering spaces and  on-site baking, Starbucks – ‘The Bank’ is a glimpse into Starbuck’s vision to the future.

While over the last few years Starbucks has gone to great lengths to reinforce the superlative quality of its coffee and products, under the radar they’ve been re-defining the atmosphere in which we drink it. In Seattle, New York, London, Paris and now Amsterdam, Starbucks has been stealthily unveiling unique and highly individualized concept stores across America and Europe.

Starbucks – The Bank

Situated in a 430 square meter subterranean space in the vault of a historic bank on the popular Rembrandtplein, the new shop is the 9th Starbucks concept store to open in the last three years across the globe, but the first shop they are openly referring to as a ‘laboratory’. A large beautiful store inspired by Dutch culture and tradition, ‘The Bank’ will raise the bar on how Starbucks openly innovates.

The laboratory

Considering its well-earned progressive reputation, Amsterdam might be the perfect spot for trying out new things. Starbucks ‘The Bank’ will function as a testing centre for innovative coffee brewing methods in its ‘Slow’ Coffee Theatre and offer small batch reserve coffees available no where else on the continent. It will also premiere Starbucks first ever Clover® brewing system in Europe. The Clover® is one of the most significant innovations in coffee brewing since the introduction of the espresso machine. Starbucks – The Bank will also feature new food concepts including in-store baking. What works at ‘The Bank’ will make its way to the rest of Europe.

Repurposed hyper-local design

As with all Starbucks concept stores, the Amsterdam shop will be a radical aesthetic departure. Under the direction of Dutch-born Liz Muller, Starbucks Concept Design director, more than 35 artists and craftsmen have kitted the subterranean space with quirky local design touches and sustainable materials. Local design details include antique Delft tiles, walls clad in bicycle inner tubes, wooden gingerbread biscuit moulds and coffee bag burlap, and a ‘tattooed’ ‘Delftware’ mural highlighting the important role 17th century Dutch traders played in exporting coffee around the world.

And while all the design and constructions adheres to strict Leed® sustainable building guidelines to reduce the impact on the environment, the designers have gone out of their way to integrate repurposed design. In addition to reclaiming the vault’s exposed concrete and 1920s marble floor, the entire shop is kitted out in repurposed Dutch oak – the benches, the tables and the undulating ceiling relief made from 1,876 pieces of individually-cut blocks. Also a radical departure from Starbucks house style are the various types of chairs and stools, reclaimed from local schools and spruced up.

Neighbourhood hotspot

With window seat cushions, a centrally-situated oak table and multi-level spaces that cameo as stages for local bands, poetry readings and other cultural activities, ‘The Bank’ is positioning itself as a cultural gathering spot in the middle of Amsterdam. With literally thousands of people living within a minute’s walk, the shop will also playfully use social media to communicate relevant moments. For example, the bakery will send out a tweet announcing ‘warm cookies’ the minute a batch rolls out of the oven.

Following our hotly debated story about the new-look interiors for fast-food giant McDonalds in France, here’s a revamped outlet for rival Burger King in Singapore that’s designed to imitate a garden. 

Like McDonalds, Burger King want to appeal to families with children as well as to teenagers, so commissioned design collective Outofstock to update their restaurants.

The Burger King Garden Grill features a plant-covered trellis ceiling, exposed brick walls and plant-pot pendent lamps.

The dining area is filled with stick-back chairs more usually found in English kitchens and metal-framed wooden dining tables inspired by camping furniture, while sofas upholstered with outdoor fabrics line the walls.

Posters advertising food are displayed in pictures frames propped up on wooden shelves.

More restaurants incorporating the new design are scheduled to open in Singapore and Japan in 2012.

Other designer updates to fast-food restaurants include a Little Chef outlet by Ab Rogers and a chicken shop in Munich by Ippolito Fleitz Group.

Here’s some more information from Outofstock:

“BK Garden Grill” by Outofstock

Burger King Asia-Pacific recently commissioned Outofstock to design a pilot restaurant in Singapore. The goal of the project was to create a new interior identity for Burger King. Some key points mentioned by BK was that they wanted a warm and welcoming store that would appeal to a wide audience – teens, young adults as well as families with children – the design should stand out but at the same time be accessible for the man on the street.

We started off by analysing the BK brand, it’s advertising visuals as well as its history. We noticed that one word that kept popping up was “flame grilled”, and we used this clue as a starting point. From collective experiences, our mental picture of flame grilling is closely associated with garden barbecues and camping cook-outs.

These activities, often held with groups of family and friends, left indelible memories in our growing up years. This led us to name the project “BK Garden Grill”, which is based on bringing the garden, as well as colours and textures of the outdoors into the restaurant.

We wanted to remind people of the joy of communal dining with family and friends in a warm and natural atmosphere, evoking memories of BBQ parties and summer camps.

We also aimed at created a more personable and flexible space, where potted plants can be neatly arranged or randomly placed on wooden ledges along exposed brick walls and glass windows. Framed marketing posters placed on these wooden shelves can be changed or moved about easily. More objects can be added to the fray with time as the restaurant develops its own story.

Custom designed lounge seats and ottomans are upholstered with outdoor fabrics that are water repellent. The lounge seating area is set against a collage wall of materials and textures, most of which are applied throughout the restaurant, from raw concrete to clay bricks, wood veneers as well as cork, blackboard, copper and brass. BK’s branding and slogans can be applied in a more engaging way with this material wall.

An overhead “roof” trellis takes visual attention away from exposed services such as air-conditioning and kitchen exhaust trunking while also acting as cable trays for pendant lamps and spot lights. We suspended clay, concrete and aluminum pots as pendant lamps to add to the garden atmosphere.

We designed simple metal framed tables whose structure is reminiscent of foldable camping furniture, but being very strong and easy to clean. We sourced for a traditional stick-back chair to complete the look of the restaurant.

The pilot store was officially opened during the recent BK Asia-Pacific Conference in Singapore and was met with generally positive feedback. More Burger King outlets based on our “Garden Grill” concept are currently being built in Singapore and Japan, and will be open by early 2012.