October 2007 • Observed
Forget the Golden Arches
This month the MIT Press is reissuing White Towers, Paul Hirshorn and Steven Izenour’s 1979 tribute to the defunct hamburger chain, which for decades churned out elegant variations on a surpassingly simple architectural theme: white building, single tower, no nonsense. Charles Johnson, the company’s architect for more than 40 years, called it the “bread-and-butter” design—a model of fast-food efficiency in a gleaming white cube.
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