The AIA San Francisco announced their 2011 design awardees recently, and the interior architecture recipient — a medical marijuana dispensary designed by Sand Studios — caught our eye.

SFist calls it the “Apple store of pot.” If you ask us, it’s got the cozy charm of an Anthropologie, if anything. Crunchier. Click through to see how the other half (that is, the half whose citizens requiring medical marijuana can safely acquire it) lives.

Sand Studios, a San Francisco-based office headed up by principle Larissa Sand, designed the project for the non-profit SPARC. Sand commented that patients requiring medical marijuana are forced to acquire it in poorly designed, dingy spaces — a spatiality that implies something pejorative. SPARC itself is the brainchild of Erich Pearson, who said that their mission is to “bring medical cannabis out of the shadows and into the light; helping patients feel good about the place they get their cannabis is key to that.”

SPARC not only sells fairly-priced marijuana, but also baby plants and snacks. According to SFist, ”Eighths come in pretty glass apothecary jars with custom designed labels, and the product is stored in wooden boxes along one wall like an old-timey apothecary. The menu and price guide are shown on hanging LCD screens.” The tables, benches, and counter are all made of local oak, and the pendant lamps are made from borosilicate science glass, which is commonly used in bongs.

The blue glass facade features a design that’s based on the DNA of the marijuana plant. Apparently, the glass was inspired also by the Twin Peaks Tavern — the first gay bar to have glass windows. The Stir quotes founder Pearson as saying that “A glass facade represents transparency, legitimacy and a sort of coming out of the closet. It lets people know we’re not afraid of anything, that there’s no shame in it. It’s therapy for a lot of people.”

Very civilized, wouldn’t you say?

by Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan

posted in news

tagged AIA, awards, medical marijuana, pot, San Francisco, sand studios

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