Googie Architecture, an Art Form Worth Saving (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Googie Architecture, an Art Form Worth Saving (2014)

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63 pointstintinnabula12 comments

There's a town in New Jersey called Wildwoods trying to keep the "doo-wop" culture alive in their 50s boardwalk area, which incorporates some of the Googie architecture. For example here's the local Wawa gas station: https://goo.gl/maps/rue4PAJ5b8hdC1kW9

I've never heard of Googie architecture, I always thought it was just called space-age modern. I have always found it very interesting, now that I know what it is called I can appreciate it more. Sadly we recently lost a movie theatre that was built in this style, it was in disrepair and nobody that wanted to keep it had the means to preserve it.

I never had a name for it, I called it Jetsons architecture. Most often I’d see it in some car washes on the el Camino and the Boulevard Cafe[1] in Daly City, for example.

[1]https://theboulevardcafe.com/gallery/

This is a actually a pretty good self-guided tour for Googie architecture in and around Los Angeles, California:

https://www.latimes.com/travel/la-trw-googie18-2008may18-sto...

Much of the architecture of this style is lost because at its peak, it was used for diners, roadside motels, and the like. When the land got too valuable, those sorts of businesses would just get plowed under.

I'm going to say something that I hate myself for even as I type it: maybe historic building status would actually be a good place to use crowdfunding. If enough people want a building to be protected, then they should put their money where their mouths are and pool up enough to outbid the developer - that way the building owner doesn't get shafted and the preservationists get their way.

It's moved to Asia. Changi airport, Singapore.

If you mean this building: https://www.safdiearchitects.com/projects/jewel-changi-airpo... then I disagree. That structure couldn't have been achieved with the technology of the Googie era. It's a "high-tech" structure as far as stylistic categorization goes.

It is a bit of a retro design, but it looks back to the scifi environments, megastructures and geodesic domes of the early 70s rather than the stiffer, simpler shapes of Googie.

You could argue that it's what futuristic architecture looks like now, which is probably fair. That doesn't make it a form of Googie.

The TWA Flight Center at JFK (1962) is considered "Googie", at least by Wikipedia.[1] That was achieved with the technology of the Googie era. So was the "Theme Building" at LAX (1961) [2]. Both are buildings with vast, swooping curves and exuberant design, like Changi's terminal.

Both had problems in the era of TSA. TWA failed, and JetBlue has the TWA terminal now. The huge wings are gone, but now it has 20 security lanes, a "monument to human throughput". The LAX Theme Building has never been very useful; it's had a restaurant inside, but few went there post 9/11, because it's outside security and you'd have to go through screening again.

By the late 1960s, big clear-span roofs like the Dulles terminal and the Astrodome were going up. The technical problems had been solved. A bit after the original Googie era, though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_Center

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_Building

The architecturally significant part of the TWA terminal is now a hotel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Hotel.

As Wikipedia says, it "straddles" various styles including Googie. I don't think a pure Googie building could be so prestigious. The typical Googie structure is low tech and relatively low cost, "flashy and vernacular" as Wikipedia says. Once you start dealing with an architect like Saarinen (TWA) or Pereira (Theme Building) there is something a bit more sophisticated and expensive going on. Those prestigious buildings don't really epitomize the style, even if we consider them to express some aspects of it in retrospect. Googie has more to do with diners, jukebokes and the fins on a car than with "serious" architecture.

The Changi building really couldn't have been built in the 60s. It's one of those load-bearing triangulated structures with a large number of glazing components of different dimensions. It is much simpler, without CAD, to make a smooth reinforced concrete dome/cantilever like the TWA building, or an arch like the Theme Building. Triangulated high-tech building skins like the one on the Gherkin in London (and Changi) are extremely expensive because of the complexity and the need to custom manufacture each component. There is a fetishization of that complexity (it's the main driver of it) in contrast to the more sculptural preoccupations that are evident in the TWA terminal. Saarinen was moulding concrete (not really a Googie concept) and Safdie is blowing bubbles of super high-tech geometry...

There is a fetishization of that complexity (it's the main driver of it) in contrast to the more sculptural preoccupations that are evident in the TWA terminal.

Yes. Fortunately, Frank Gehry's worst excesses seem to be behind him.

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