Introduction
McDonald's: the place versus the metaphor is a research project, developed intermittently by Ergosfera since 2008, on McDonald's as a primitive experiment of global space and as a set of generic architectures, urban pieces and social places that, when approached from the popular uses that they are capable of hosting (both formal and informal), are revealed as spaces of maximum public interest.
Through the analysis of multiple sources of information, the compilation of documentation and field work on particular cases, the project tries to study questions such as what role McDonald's play as a space for socialization in the contemporary city (from adolescence to old age and from the middle classes to the precariat and the excluded); what processes triggers its condition as seed of urbanity in many peripheral or infrastructural territories; or what architectural characteristics and management model make a generic and globalized space capable of hosting particularly diverse and autonomous social practices.
Eighty years after its appearance and forty since the opening of its first store in Spain, McDonald's is today a phenomenon that is as popular and globalized as it is contradictory to the dominant ideas in the world of contemporary culture and criticism. Thus, while the perspectives of approaching the case focus mainly on the necessary study of its environmental, labor or public health impacts, on the uncritical analysis of its business model as an economic success, or on the sociological work on its status as idea and organization system with a great cultural impact on a global scale, there are several blind spots where the research remains generally diluted in metaphors around the concept of McDonaldization.
Continuing the research work of many others, this project aims to study McDonald's as a place and social space based on its architectural and urban conditions. It is there, as a global space located in a specific territory, where it is possible to identify singular qualities that, although they can be understood as simple contingent externalities of a productive process, also allow us to imagine postcapitalist desires where the educated eye tends to see only ordinariness or without reason.
STRUCTURE
The structure of the research project in March 2022 is as follows:
- 1.- The McDonald's case: criticism and prejudice
- 2.- McDonald's as a primitive experiment of global space
- 3.- McDonald's as architecture
- 4.- McDonald's as an urban piece
- 4.1.- High-density areas (residential or of flows)
- 4.2.- Tourist enclaves
- 4.3.- Mobility nodes
- 4.4.- Shopping centers
- 4.5.- Main communication routes
- 5.- McDonald's as a place and social space
- 6.- McDonald's as postcapitalist desire
MATERIALS
The materials shared so far are the following:
- A small text entitled #McDonalds, which is a section of the article «Urbanismos y culturas: ¿cómo nos relacionamos con lo popular, lo imprevisible y lo genérico?» published in the book Kulturtopias: imaginarios para las culturas comunitarias (Ayuntamiento de Zaragoza, 2018), and which is a short introduction to the project written as part of a reflection on the relationships between urban planning and community cultures.
- The presentation of the project at FETSAC'22 - Confluencias (22-03-2022), a conference of which it is possible to see the video, as well as consult and download the images, and which is a fairly complete sample of the materials worked on up to the moment and the current structure of the investigation.
- The materials produced as part of the project Espacios globales, ¿refugios urbanos?, a few days of workshop, reflection and debate on the role of global and generic spaces as social places in the contemporary city that took place on April 21, 22 and 25 in Barcelona as part of the program +Model of the Model - Festival de Arquitecturas de Barcelona 2023.
- The materials produced as part of the project Magia posmoderna en Carabanchel. Comunidades subalternizadas, periferias urbanas y espacios globales, a work carried out from a month-long #Ey!MAD artistic research residency, developed in Carabanchel (Madrid) between June and July 2023 and organized by #Ey!Studio with the collaboration of Acción Cultural Española (AC/E).
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