Batumi McDonald’s: World’s Best Commercial Building 2014

Batumi McDonald’s is the world’s best commercial building for the 2014 year.

The restaurant, designed by Harvard-graduate and Georgian architect Giorgi Khmaladze, was named Building of the Year in the Commercial Architecture category in an international competition by world architecture firm Arch Daily.

Results were announced today on the firm’s website archdaily.com

The website showcased 3,500 projects from around the world before allowing readers to vote for their favourite buildings.

This narrowed down the entries to the best five in each category; commercial architecture, cultural architecture, educational architecture, healthcare architecture, hospitality architecture, houses, housing, industrial architecture, interior architecture, offices, public architecture, refurbishment, religious architecture and sports architecture.

The Batumi building combined a McDonald’s restaurant with a fuel station and recreational areas.

The building’s architect said the building was designed in a way to hide the fuel station operations from the view of customers inside the restaurant.

Four hundred sixty glass panels were used to create the exterior while the entire building is surrounded by a reflective pool.

"Part of the dining space offers views towards outside water features, while the rest of it seamlessly transitions into open air patio on the upper level,” architect Khmaladze said.

"The patio, enclosed from all sides to protect the space from outside noise, provides calm open air seating. The vegetation layer, which covers the cantilevered giant canopy of the fuel station, adds natural environment and acts as an "ecological shield" for the terrace.”

The building has a small footprint to allow vehicle circulation that doesn't disrupt city traffic. Courtesy of Giorgi Khmaladze

The gas station sits underneath the canopy that holds one dining area. Courtesy of Giorgi Khmaladze

This "ecological shield" of vegetation keeps fumes from the gas station out of a dining area. Courtesy of Giorgi Khmaladze