Apotheosis of a brand.

McDonald's, a company whose buildings and products have set standards for naffness, has made an elegant and restrained headquarters building which has transformed a stolid inner-city suburb of Helsinki.

No company could be more devoted to driving home its brand image than McDonald's. From China to Chile, Tibet to Timbuctoo, the double golden arches announce the presence of fast food, standard in every respect.(1) The menu is always absolutely the same, and the restaurants are clearly at least of the same family (as are the staff who serve in them). Brash and naff the atmosphere may be, but it's a brand manager's dream, and is enormously successful and profitable.

So it is a great surprise to find that the McDonald's Helsinki headquarters is a masterpiece of cool Finnish architectural restraint. A six-storey circular tower next to a busy main road forms a landmark on the edge of a stolid inner western suburb. It dominates the immediate area, not because of easily identifiable kitsch gestures, but by elegance. The cylinder is striped in continuous strips of window and powder-coated aluminium panels,(2) both glass and metal are slightly tinged green. The effect is of a rather austere but very well detailed Modernist '30s rounded corner in one of the northern Scandinavian capitals. Magic, presence and delicacy are provided by a timber sunscreen which stands some 2.5m from the metal and glass wall. Semi-circular, it shades the west, south and east sides of the building which, coincidentally, are the ones most exposed to view from the junction of the busy Paciuksenkatu and a side street. So from here, the thin horizontal spruce(3) slats are seen to shield the drum in a semi-opaque russet veil in which the articulation of solid and void is echoed by having the slats in front of the window bands twice as far apart as those before the spandrels. The glossy surfaces of the cylinder reflect sunlight back through the veil. A constant counterpoint between the inner and outer layers ensures that the building seems different at every angle and hour. The tower contains a McDonald's restaurant on the ground floor. A good deal more stylish than most, it has a double-height space where a horizontally striped screen of translucent and transparent glass allows glimpses of the kitchen and servery, the super cleanliness and neatness of which are revealed -as they were in one of the first restaurants, in Des Plaines, Illinois, celebrated in a painting by Pekka Mannermaa which reveals that the golden M is derived from an abstraction of the glittering 1950s arches that supported the canopy over the early standard plans. To further emphasize that this is no ordinary McDonald's, a sprightly scarlet metal millipede by sculptor Kari Caven writhes through the upper part of the volume; the form and implied movement of the 'Flight of the Bat' is supposed to recall the 1950s classic bat chair.

The first floor contains a training centre (this is where recruits learn to be members of the McDonald's family). Going up, there are offices, and the cylinder terminates with a rectangular plant room which echoes the orthogonal organization of the interior, and a roof terrace, largely screened by the timber veil. The simple office furniture was designed by the architects: steel frames and maple-covered ply tops form the desks, storage units are varnished MDF.(4)

Outside again, at night. Slats practically disappear, almost lost as diaphanous striations when light pours out from the interior. A big McDonald's M is on the site corner. Though the clients did not require any corporate identification on this occasion, the architects bit the bullet and formed a six metre high perforated metal structure, folded to give it stiffness. Set over a cheery blue tiled wall, it glows from below, shading towards the sky. Suddenly the banal has been given beauty, and you are reminded that these architects are masters of dramatic luminosity, with devices as varied as the solar slot which turns the Rovaniemi airport into a time-machine (AR September 1993), and the magic carpet that spreads out into the forest from Finland's Washington chancery (AR March 1993).

McDonald's is a company that has done more than most to homogenize the world. To have made what is in essence one of its small local headquarters into a building which adds distinction and a sense of place to its neighbourhood, and to make it shine to the world is no small accomplishment.(5)

1 Almost. There are some deviations to cater for local dietary taboos (notably in India, where beef is anathema to Hindus)

2 The aluminium sheets are in fact rainscreens, protecting damp-proofing and insulation behind.

3 This is very special spruce. By heating timber in airless containers a product with hardness, resistance to deformation. structural properties and weather resistance (and to some extent the colour) of tropical hardwoods is produced Thermowood spruce is a real breakthrough in timber technology, developed by the Finnish State Technical Research Centre, which promises to benefit soft and hardwood industries alike.

4 How is it that Scandinavian architects are always designing special furniture (even if simple like this)? Ed.

5 For which, of course, the clients deserve congratulation too if only they could look again at the general run of their restaurants.

Architect Heikkinen-Komonen Architects, Helsinki Mikko Heikkinen and Markku Komonen Janne Kentala (project architect), Hanna Euro, Antti Kononen, Markku Puumala, Sarlotta Narjus

Landscape architect Gretel Hemgard

Construction Magnus Malmberg/HN Suunnittelu

Consulting engineers Projectus Team

Geotechnical Vesi-Hydro

Contractors Skanska Etela-Suomi

Ground construction YIT-Yhtyma

Facades Teraselementti

Services ABB Installaatiot

Office furniture R. O. Loimulahti

Photographs Jussi Tiainen