You might not be "lovin’ it," but there’s no way you’re not going to have an opinion about it.
On the heels of the largest KFC in the world in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, comes a spectacular new McDonald’s restaurant in Georgia’s Black Sea port city of Batumi, designed by Harvard-educated architect Giorgi Khmaladze.
But you’d be hard-pressed to identify this cantilevered-glass spaceship of a building as a restaurant, much less a mundane McDonald’s.
The exterior is covered by 460 glass panels, while the entire building is surrounded by a reflecting pool whose flowing lines mimic the jazzy shapes from 1950s wallpaper. The interior features dining areas that look out onto the reflecting pool and an open-air patio featuring a surprisingly large expanse of vegetation.
As if all that isn’t impressive enough, the underside of the giant looming cantilever protects a busy gas station, whose operations are totally invisible to restaurant customers.
Khmaladze, who’s won a string of international awards for his designs, tells RFE/RL that the most challenging aspect of the 1,200-square-meter project was preserving the "wow factor" while accommodating the strict requirements of the McDonald’s Corporation.
On the heels of the largest KFC in the world in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, comes a spectacular new McDonald’s restaurant in Georgia’s Black Sea port city of Batumi, designed by Harvard-educated architect Giorgi Khmaladze.
But you’d be hard-pressed to identify this cantilevered-glass spaceship of a building as a restaurant, much less a mundane McDonald’s.
The exterior is covered by 460 glass panels, while the entire building is surrounded by a reflecting pool whose flowing lines mimic the jazzy shapes from 1950s wallpaper. The interior features dining areas that look out onto the reflecting pool and an open-air patio featuring a surprisingly large expanse of vegetation.
As if all that isn’t impressive enough, the underside of the giant looming cantilever protects a busy gas station, whose operations are totally invisible to restaurant customers.
Khmaladze, who’s won a string of international awards for his designs, tells RFE/RL that the most challenging aspect of the 1,200-square-meter project was preserving the "wow factor" while accommodating the strict requirements of the McDonald’s Corporation.
