One of the more underrated landmarks of 20th-century geopolitics has undergone a complete transformation into a mirrored elevation of the surrounding community thanks to the latest in a global series of innovative redesign projects from Landini Associates for McDonald’s. 

To mark its 30th year of operation in the former Soviet capital of Moscow, McDonald’s asked the Australian-based firm to remake the historic Pushkin Square restaurant into a more modern and experimental space that would double as the company’s Russian flagship and the home of a special initiative called Project Ray. 

Named after founder Ray Kroc’s vision to create a respectful and quiet space for people to take a dignified break from the every day, the project’s brief has meant reimagining the restaurant as a service point in heavily trafficked urban environments in order to be more appealing to a millennial consumer base. This has brought new spaces from Landini to Hong Kong, London, Toronto, China, Poland, Qatar, San Francisco, Brisbane, their hometown of Sydney, and Times Square in New York City. 

The Pushkin Square project is the latest in the series that began in 2015 and features many of the same modernized equipment like self-service kiosks in addition to several aesthetic enhancements that use form and material to differentiate the various uses of both object and space. 

The restaurant is first of all framed by a mirrored ceiling and facade that creates an expanded sense of height and doubles with a new calming lighting scheme to create what the architects call a “bubble of happy” throughout the three-story space. In addition to a more customizable menu, the store offers four types of seating arranged by size and made of oak, concrete, or zinc. An all-timber cafe delineates a more relaxed space separate from the bustle of the dining room, and an overall palette of glass and stainless steel underscores the significance of the project as a forebear to the future of thinking about designing for an industry on the precipice of change.

“We live in an ever-changing world. There are fewer constants each day. Food however is, and can be, one of these,” founder Mark Landini says of the endeavor. “Eating is a fundamental human interaction. A place of commune where we behave as we have for millennia. We need a visually quiet place to do this in, to hear each other laugh, argue, and cry.”