My 2nd architecture job was at a firm in SF doing really boring chain retail projects. I helped design a Sephora that was going into an old California Pizza Kitchen. Many very serious meetings about how to apply the requisite Sephora stripes to the CPK rotunda without it looking like a circus tent
Another goofy boring retail design topic of many serious meetings that I remember from that job was how to use strategic shrubbery placement to block the adjacent Taco Bell from view from the Banana Republic or whatever we were designing
Oh yeah: the first design attempt had the stripes on the California Pizza Cylinder and it did look very much like a circus tent (or like it was perpetually being treated for termites)
The Douglas Coupland novel writes itself
"homie, let's meet at the Epstein Island Temple Sephora"
That’s some serious taqueria opening up in an old Pizza Hut energy.
Lolol yeah we did our best but you'd have to do major reconstructive surgery to make this look like not-a-california pizza kitchen