R. Dakin & Company was one of the largest manufacturers of plush products in the United States, famous for its teddy bears before the Garfield licensing bonanza transformed the company's finances. The Applause Toys division rode the Garfield wave to extraordinary sales, generating enough profit to commission a corporate headquarters that would serve as a statement of ambition. The company chose Sierra Point, a peninsula jutting into San Francisco Bay just south of the city border in Brisbane, and hired architects to design a building that would be visible from the freeway, the bay, and the air.

The shimmering white porcelain facade caught the light in ways that gave the building its nickname. Drivers on US 101 saw it gleam against the bay, a beacon marking the transition from San Francisco's dense urban grid to the suburban sprawl of the Peninsula. Its dark neighbor was nicknamed the Darth Vader building for its black smoke glass exterior, making the contrast inescapable. The Dakin Building won an American Institute of Architects Design Excellence Award in 1992, with the jury praising its chief strength: the soaring five-story atrium capped by a massive skylight dome with bay views and asymmetrical design. The design turned a corporate headquarters into a local landmark -- the kind of building that people use as a navigational reference without knowing its name.

The Dakin Building has outlived the company that built it. R. Dakin & Company's fortunes eventually declined, and the building has served as corporate headquarters for several other companies over the decades. Its location on Sierra Point -- with bay views, freeway access, and proximity to San Francisco -- has kept it relevant in the commercial real estate market long after the Garfield profits that funded its construction were spent. The building remains a fixture of the Brisbane waterfront, its white porcelain panels still catching the afternoon sun, still drawing the eye of anyone flying into SFO along the bay approach.