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Concept
Googie architecture
Summary
Googie architecture (ˈgu:gi ) is a type of futurist architecture influenced by car culture, jets, the Atomic Age and the Space Age. It originated in Southern California from the Streamline Moderne architecture of the 1930s, and was popular in the United States from roughly 1945 to the early 1970s.
Googie-themed architecture was popular among roadside businesses, including motels, coffee houses and gas stations. The style later became widely known as part of the mid-century modern style, elements of which represent the populuxe aesthetic, as in Eero Saarinen's TWA Terminal. The term Googie comes from the now-defunct Googies Coffee Shop in Hollywood designed by John Lautner. Similar architectural styles are also referred to as Populuxe or Doo Wop.
Features of Googie include upswept roofs, curvilinear, geometric shapes, and bold use of glass, steel and neon. Googie was also characterized by Space Age designs symbolic of motion, such as boomerangs, flying saucers, diagrammatic atoms and parabolas, and free-form designs such as "soft" parallelograms and an artist's palette motif. These stylistic conventions represented American society's fascination with Space Age themes and marketing emphasis on futuristic designs. As with the Art Deco style of the 1910s–1930s, Googie became less valued as time passed, and many buildings in this style have been destroyed. Some examples have been preserved, though, such as the oldest McDonald's stand (located in Downey, California).
The origin of the name Googie dates to 1949, when architect John Lautner designed the Googies Coffee Shop in Hollywood, which had distinct architectural characteristics. The name "Googie" had been a family nickname of Lillian K. Burton, the wife of the restaurant's original owner, Mortimer C. Burton.
Googies was located at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Crescent Heights in Los Angeles but was demolished in 1989. The name Googie became a rubric for the architectural style when editor Douglas Haskell of House and Home magazine and architectural photographer Julius Shulman were driving through Los Angeles one day.
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