2. • Googie architecture is a form of modern architecture, a subdivision of futurist architecture influenced
by car culture, jets, the Space age, and the Atomic Age.
• Originating in Southern California during the late 1940s and continuing approximately into the mid-1960s,
Googie-themed architecture was popular among motels, coffee houses and gas stations.
• At the peak of the modern era, a meshing of car culture and the Space Age brought about the gaudy and
garnished Googie architecture.
• The Googie style is influenced heavily by the fascination of 1950’s America with the first space missions, the
development of nuclear power, and the reality of the first generation to flood the nation’s roads with
automobiles. Architects hoping to attract this newly-mobile and suburban population to restaurants, stores
and other commercial establishments lining the country’s highways and byways capitalized on this
fascination by utilizing architectural elements that celebrated space-flight and futuristic motifs.
INTRODUCTION
Googie Architecture: Futurism Through Modernism
3. • Googie architecture came about as a result of
the spread of suburban America and the
massive increase in car ownership that
followed WWII.
• As towns and cities spread there was no
longer a reliance on downtown shops, cafes
and restaurants as businesses were set up to
cater for the new suburbanites alongside the
developing highway network that was being
constructed.
• With their new found mobility people were
able to drive to see movies, eat some fast-
food and have a great night out without ever
leaving their cars.
• Business owners needed to attract customers
who were driving by and developed a space
age, modern style of architecture that
symbolised the excitement, energy and
prosperity of 1950s America.
4. • The origin of the name Googie dates
to 1949, when architect John
Lautner designed the West
Hollywood coffee shop Googies,
which had distinct architectural
characteristics.
• With its place on Sunset Boulevard in
Los Angeles the new style caught the
eye of many passersby who began to
associate the style with the glamour
of Hollywood. The spread of this
movement from Southern California
went most notably north and south
along the shore to become a symbol
of west coast futurism.
5. • The main settings for the Googie style were harbored
in the roots of its founding. Coffee shops, gas stations
and fast food venues used this architecture as much
as a marketing campaign as for structural support.
• A Googie building was a symbol that a business was
with the times, which in turn brought traffic and
attention to its doors. The McDonalds of the 1950s
and 60s famously adopted Googie style.
• Editor Douglas Haskell described the abstract Googie
style, saying that "If it looks like a bird, this must be a
geometric bird." Also, the buildings must appear to defy
gravity, as Haskell noted: "...whenever possible, the
building must hang from the sky".Haskell's third tenet for
Googie was that it have more than one theme—more
than one structural system. Because of its need to be
noticed from moving automobiles along the commercial
strip, Googie was not a style noted for its subtlety.
6. CHARACTERSTICS
• Cantilevered structures, acute angles, illuminated plastic paneling,
freeform boomerang and artist's palette shapes and cutouts, and
tailfins on buildings marked Googie architecture, which was
contemptible to some architects of then-current High Art Modernism ,
but had defenders during the post-Modern period at the end of the
20th century.
• The signatures Googie style lie in sweeping arches and hard angles,
cantilevered roofs and bold colors, and, its most relative homage to
the Space Age, the starburst.
• Googie describes a futuristic, often flashy, building style that evolved in
the United States during the 1950s. Often used for restaurants, motels,
bowling alleys, and assorted roadside businesses, Googie architecture
was designed to attract customers.
• Reflecting high-tech space-age ideas, the Googie style grew out of the
Streamline Moderne, or Art Moderne, architecture of the 1930s.
7. The common elements that generally distinguish Googie
from other forms of architecture are:
Starbursts: Starbursts are an ornament that is common
with the Googie style, showing its Space Age and
whimsical influences. Perhaps the most notable example
of the starburst appears on the "Welcome to Fabulous
Las Vegas" sign, which has now become famous. The
ornamental design is in the form of, as Hess writes, "a
high-energy explosion". This shape is an example of non-
utilitarian design, as the star shape has no actual function
but merely serves as a design element.
The boomerang shape was another design element that
captured movement. It was used structurally in place of a
pillar or aesthetically as a stylized arrow. Hess writes that
the boomerang was a stylistic rendering of a directional
energy field.
8. Roofs sloping at an upward
angle: This is the one particular
element in which architects
were creating a unique
structure. Many Googie style
coffee shops, and other
structures, have a roof that
appears to be 2⁄3 of an inverted
obtuse triangle. A great example
of this is the famous, but now
closed, Johnie's Coffee Shop on
Wilshire Boulevard in Los
Angeles.
9. Born in LA, the futuristic style soon spread to other American cities such as Las Vegas, Miami, and
Wildwood, New Jersey. But the quintessential Googie example was incorporated in a 1958 sign for Sin
City’s own Stardust Casino and Hotel. A miasma of glittering, colorful light befitting stardust, the roadside
marquee complemented a galaxy of planets that comprised the main signage on the casino building, along
with another explosion of 20 neon starbursts.
The Stardust sign is said to have utilized 7,100 feet of neon tubing with more than 11,000 bulbs along its
216-foot front. The “S” alone contained 975 lamps and, at night, the neon constellation was reportedly
visible 60 miles away. But with changing times comes changing aesthetics, and thus the sign eventually lost
much of its Jetsonian features long before its 2007 demolition.
