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McDonald's Innovation Center

Studio O+A

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Sponsor
Comments
Innovation
Functionality
Creativity
Eco-Social Impact
Total
JURY VOTES
Large Office
5.50
7.07
5.93
5.14
5.91
Ruud Belmans
Ruud Belmans Creative Director at WeWantMore
For a source of invention and alway...
4
7
5
5
5.25
Leni Popovici
Leni Popovici Founding Director and Partner at KAP Studios
A nice aesthetic that plays off of...
5
9
6
3
5.75
Gudy Herder
Gudy Herder Trend Consultant at Eclectic Trends
The promise of an Innovation Center...
5
8
6
5
6
Anne-Rachel Schiffmann
Anne-Rachel Schiffmann Director of Interior Architecture at Snøhetta
5
7
6
5
5.75
Stefan Weil
Stefan Weil CCO at Atelier Markgraph
I like the spatial appearance and u...
5
5
5
5
5
Veronica Givone
Veronica Givone Managing Director Hospitality at IA Interior Architects
A great office space for sure but a...
5
7
6
5
5.75
Justine Fox
Justine Fox Cofounder | Colour Specialist at Calzada Fox
There are some great spatial change...
5
7
6
5
5.75
Yifan Wu
Yifan Wu Cofounder at Sò Studio
5
6
6
6
5.75
Mengjie Liu
Mengjie Liu Cofounder at Sò Studio
5
7
6
5
5.75
Tina Norden
Tina Norden Partner at Conran and Partners
No doubt it does its job very well...
5
7
5
5
5.5
Sonia Tomic
Sonia Tomic Senior Associate, Head of Furniture & Materials at Universal Design Studio
7
7
7
6
6.75
Omar Abdelghafour
Omar Abdelghafour Founder Principal at Light Space Design
7
7
5
6
6.25
Christiaan Fokkema
Christiaan Fokkema Partner at Hollandse Nieuwe
I appreciate the thoroughly placed...
7
8
7
6
7
Liam Doyle
Liam Doyle Principal at Jump Studios
7
7
7
5
6.5
Designer
Client
McDonald's
Floor area
4877 ㎡
Completion
2019

Every MBA knows the value of a detailed business plan, but a successful business profits, as well, from its detours. The discovery you wouldn’t have made if you hadn’t left the main road is of special value to companies that have been on that road for decades. Many years ago McDonald’s built a detour into its creative infrastructure. This special facility for experimentation became a source of new products, new processes, new thinking that have kept the company at the top of its industry through a period of epochal change. After O+A partnered with McDonald’s on a new corporate headquarters in Chicago’s West Loop, it turned to the Innovation Center for a similarly fresh look at the spaces where fresh looking is the principal activity of the day. Romeoville, Illinois is a suburb of Chicago known primarily as a shipping and warehousing hub. Since 2001 it has also been home to McDonald’s Innovation Center, a sprawling complex that serves as the company’s operational test facility. New equipment gets put through its paces here. New kitchen processes are rehearsed and fine-tuned. It’s a space dedicated to keeping McDonald’s at the forefront of innovation, but the center itself hadn’t had a refresh in almost 20 years. O+A’s first challenge was to pull out the improvised panels and black foam core that had turned the space into “a maze” and create the clear sightlines and uncluttered contexts that visionary work demands. But the barriers removed were not just physical. Over the years it had become the Center’s custom to keep kitchen and office operations separate and their respective staffs apart. The new Center encourages interaction in a shared café, gallery space and phone mezzanine and projects a welcoming brightness everywhere. When McDonald’s teams from other countries come to the Innovation Center to test drive a new menu, logistics technology or kitchen configuration they need a temporary Central Command. In the old space that was a conference room in a corner far-removed from the kitchen. O+A’s design repositioned it to an area directly adjacent to the action and equipped it with custom pivot doors that allow visiting innovators to run back and forth. Despite the noise of a busy professional kitchen, those doors are almost always open. For all the ingenuity the Innovation Center has brought to McDonald’s global operation, until now it has never had its own brand logo. O+A graphic designer Paulina McFarland devised a symbol that answered the client’s preference for “a lightbulb,” while suggesting illumination specific to McDonald’s. Surely one of the most remarkable things about this Innovation Center is how successfully, over many years of practice, it has steered creative thinking through the golden arches, how it has made McDonald’s a consistent source of invention and an always relevant leader in its industry.