apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Have you seen the Rock and Roll McDonald's?

That place is decked out with MCM pieces.

I would even eat at the McDonald's!

Well, the "architecture" of the Supersize McDonalds in River North is, of course, laughable & hideous--and I sure hope Bruce McCall is getting a percentage of the take--but some of the more intimate upstairs areas, furnished with chairs & tables that are Modernist icons, aren't half bad.

I mean, where else would most regular folks ever get a chance to sit down & compare the supremely elegant discomfort of Mies' Barcelona chair with the amoeboid postwar perfection of Eames' potato chip lounge chairs, or with a sleek & bouncy Brno chair, or the Emperor's-New-Clothes elegance of the Ghost chair? I mean, I had never even sat in Starck's chair until I did it here while I ate my Filet-O-Fish.

OK, the cheek-by-jowl juxtaposition of these different ensembles doesn't really show them to their best advantage, but it's still better than sitting on one of those weird plastic benches in a normal McDonald's, and if you choose your table wisely, a noon-time meal here can be fairly enjoyable. At any rate, it's good to see that the use of handsome Modern pieces at McDonald's might turn into a trend.
Magnaverde.

If anyone in Chicago is coming down to Charleston, IL, for a funtion at Eastern Illinois University, you may want to go by the old McDonald's. It is not the 1975 eyesore. A new one went up over the summer. My favorite element is the long table through the middle with the Enesco steel chairs. Pretty upscale for us downstate.

It is not McDo's (as they say in France). 'Quick' restaurants.

FYI-I just read in the trades that Fritz Hansen (owner of the rights for AJ designs) has cut off all relations with McDonalds over the use of the Arne Jacobsen chairs in the UK. The chairs in the UK outlets are allegedly pirated copies. While it is apperantly legal to use pirated copies in the UK, its not very nice.