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.