While MDG challenged WSI to consider radically different exterior appearances for this store, the fact remains that this Pottery Barn looks no different than any other freestanding Pottery Barn, in the Bay Area or elsewhere. Perhaps this resulted fromWSI's interest in maintaining a clear brand identity, despite the various dialogues that WSI held with the community and the city. Nonetheless, our team found it regretful that some of the more ambitious design approaches entertained by MDG weren't pursued further by the client.

To be fair to WSI, their decision to explore the use of sustainable materials and revise their design guidelines was quite notable. Thus, w hile this store won't break any new aesthetic ground, it will behave in a more environmentally sensitive manner and offer some guidance for future designs that similarly incorporate various sustainable technologies and techniques.

Did the community get what it wanted?

The community response to and participation in the store's design process was for the most part successful. On one hand, the client and architect were both forced to consider the neighborhood's stated desires and adjust their standard operating procedure accordingly. On the other, the main concessions to the community - an on-site ATM, and an off-site community room - had surprising little impact on the store's final physical form and appearance.

Due to their role as judge and arbiter for the project's approval, the SF city planning department had significantly greater impact on the store’s eventual appearance than the community. Had the city granted the Castro neighborhood groups' request for discretionary review, the neighborhood would have secured dramatically more leverage to force the client's hand and perhaps modify the store's design towards their hoped for direction - primarily a variegated scale building that housed additional uses and tenants than Pottery Barn's single commercial tenancy.

One wonders whether opposition to the design was tempered by the number of Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma customers living in the Castro, and by the visual improvement that the new design, however commercialized and conventional, offered in comparison to the previous building. As some local journalists noted, many residents, activists or otherwise, accept that chain stores, Banana Republic, Pottery Barn or otherwise, have already entered the Castro and provided considerable economic benefit to the neighborhood, and will most likely continue to do so. The question that remains is how vigilant the neighborhood will remain in providing a critical voice to test the developer's and chain store's least noble whims and desires.