450 architects

“Circular World” written by Zahid Sardar for the San Francisco Examiner Magazine, Sunday, March 20, 1994

When owners Barbie White and Judy Gittelsohn hired Richard Parker to design their new store on Sutter Street last year, they gave their old friend an ironclad deadline. “It has to open on Mother’s Day, May 9th,” they told him.

Why such inflexibility? Well, White and Gittelsohn are in the mom business. They’re the owners of Japanese Weekend Inc., a thriving 7-year-old maternity clothing business headquartered in San Francisco.

Undaunted, Parker successfully transformed the tacky mirrored and mauve-carpeted space into a fresh, whitewashed, environmentally conscious design in six scant weeks. Approving mothers lined up around the block on opening day.

Parker’s clean, uncluttered design had a unique genesis. White, Gittelsohn, store manager Terry Watson and Parker, all old friends, used to be professional dancers with the uninhibited new-wave techno-pop band Voice Farm. Even after executing their wild career switches, dance and music remained an essential part of all their lives, and when the owners talked about what they wanted, “they made these broad open gestures with their arms,” says Parker. “I remembered that. Their gestures suggested all these elliptical and circular forms.”

Boards of vertical-grained fir trim each side, arcing along the length of the floor as though containing two large circles in the sisal-covered space between. These curves echo the arc of the exposed vaulted ceiling beams, which were previously concealed by an oppressive redwood false ceiling. In the entryway a semicircular cement slab has playful, low-relief hand and foot impressions. “Those were made by my godchild, Barbie’s godchildren and my dog,” says Parker, pleased by this outburst of whimsical spontaneity in what is essentially a centered, somewhat symmetrical design. Halfway into the store, rising to eye level, is an elegant elliptical dais—a sales counter also of fir that’s mounted on a metal stand skirted with wire mesh.

The tallest of Parker’s circular forms, in the far back of the store, is also the most ingenious. The store’s changing room had to be large enough to maneuver a wheelchair in, while providing sufficient privacy. Such an enclosure could have easily overwhelmed the small store. Parker’s solution was inspired by his line of lampshades. Wrapped around a simple, free-standing circular armature is a skin of plywood on which Parker mounted white fluorescent lights. Wrapped over these cool lights is a layer of opaque plexiglass. Finally, stretched over the plexi is a doubled-wrapper of stainless-steel wire mesh quilted in about 6-inch squares. Each quilted square contains “recycled plastic,” culled from the families of people who work at JW’s South of Market design studio: a doll’s plastic shoe, plastic toy animals, a rubber Mickey Mouse, combs.

The effect is stunning. The back-lit plexi glows magically, diffusing the light and highlighting the plastic objets like translucent jewels. The giant changing enclosure virtually evaporates into light. When you enter the glowing cylinder from the wide opening in the back, the plywood casing and a canvas curtain offer total privacy.

Best of all, children love it. “Kids like to spot the things they like,” says Parker. “It keeps them occupied. It’s a baby-sitter.”

The rest of the space is treated like an art gallery, partly because Gittlesohn paints and has a rotating show of her enigmatic work in the store, and partly because both owners and the designer wanted to avoid the sterile, back-of-the-shop approach to displaying maternity clothes. To show White’s extraordinary clothes—they’re carefully designed to flatter and align with the changing anatomy of a pregnant woman—Parker devised several hand-notched, poplarwood wall panels with protruding rods to hang a few garments on. The panels frame the clothes to show off the silhouettes. Watson, who is directly in charge of retail sales at the store, specified the rod lengths for the metal and wood racks that hold the bulk of the merchandise.

And Parker didn’t forget flowers for moms. Elegant blown-glass vases from de Vera are mounted on slender totems in three corners. In them are spare sprigs of “flowers” Parker made from tension wire and the cut-off ends of green soda-pop bottles. “That’s recycled plastic too,” he says.