[T]hough in practice CVS is context agnostic: A CVS looks like a CVS no matter where it is. It is a structure without character or distinction, and to walk along such a building is an unpleasant experience that degrades pedestrian life, the civic space and all the other properties around it. — Mark Lamster, Dallas News
Architecture critic Mark Lamster of The Dallas Morning News gives his two cents on why CVS Pharmacy, America's largest pharmacy chain, should rethink the “manipulative designs” of their retail stores, describing it as a case of “urban malpractice by chain retailers”.
“As a CVS customer, I would like to see the company do a better job of embracing the city on which it depends [...],” Lamster writes in the piece. “In areas where there is a growing pedestrianism, where the city is discovering a new walkability, it needs to rethink its designs.”
16 Comments
This is a good, critical article. Mark makes a lot of excellent points, especially about how CVS could adapt their stores in environments that are already more pedestrian oriented to enhance that kind of activity.
I do want to point out though, that CVS stop selling cigarettes a couple of years ago. So yes, they still sell the candy and other junk food, but giving up the revenue stream from cigarettes was actually a wonderful statement by them.
I like my local CVS because I can walk to it and I know the names of the cashiers.
Good they "already" gave up selling cigarettes.
But a pharmacy that sells candy and junk food, holy crap...do they also sell guns and liquor?
Yes, at a great price actually (the booze that is...)
unfiltered camels were the best!
Local ordinances should prevent these eyesores and not rely on the goodwill of the owners (which can change very quickly with mergers and buy-outs and bankruptcies). I have seen some chain stores fit in nicely in restored, historical areas, so it can be done with some care and effort.
What is really depressing is that this dreck, signage and aluminum panels and all, was most likely designed by an architect.
Yes, it can be done. I've walked past this McD's in Kraków, PL and was positively surprised how they handled it.
This critique is pretty good, but not sure what separates CVS from Walgreens from Wal-Mart and so on. They all are anti-pedestrian, even more so for Wal-Mart/Home Depot that develop primarily on hilltop locations that are impossible to walk to. Walgreens can be walkable from neighborhoods, while CVS seems to focus on very busy street and commercial roads. Maybe this is a strategy.
I usually avoid CVS by going to a local grocery store. It might be more inconvenient, but it's a more pleasant experience and without the lowest common design and supergraphics.
Either way, I'm not sure you can project New York style pedestrianism on Dallas. Middle America is more pedestrian designed than many east coasters think, if you are in the right neighborhoods. It's just the neighborhoods are disconnected from commercial and each other. A few well designed pedestrian bridges, streets, and maybe trains could fix a lot of issues.
Why beautify something, which has caused so much suffering on a human and architectural scale?
^Barring a nuclear apocalypse, CVS ain't going nowhere for the foreseeable future. So, instituting a corporate design language that doesn't turn it's back to the public space it (generally) occupies, and becomes a pleasant part of the built-scape isn't a bad thing. With your take it makes it sound like they're running the DPRK prison camps on the side, or something...
No aluminum panels and much reduced signage. This one is in Alexandria, Virginia, which has more stringent building rules than Arlington.
This architecture sucks too. Just in a different way.
OK, post a pix of a drugstore you like.
An idiotic architecture "critic" writes a review of CVS's and you guys lap it up. Not much going on where you all are I guess.
Yes, discussing what makes decent, attractive neighborhoods and doing away with the dreck buildings impersonating billboards is so passé.
This is a zoning issue, not an architecture issue.
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