Googie architecture

These stylistic conventions represented American society's fascination with Space Age themes and marketing emphasis on futuristic designs.

In his article he used the fictional Professor Thrugg's overly effusive praise to mock Googie, at the same time lampooning Hollywood, which he felt informed the aesthetic.

[16] Alan Hess, one of the most knowledgeable writers on the subject, writes in Googie: Ultra Modern Road Side Architecture that mobility in Los Angeles during the 1930s was characterized by the initial influx of the automobile and the service industry that evolved to cater to it.

With car ownership increasing, cities no longer had to be centered on a central downtown but could spread out to the suburbs, where business hubs could be interspersed with residential areas.

[18] Hess writes that because of the increase in mass production and travel during the 1930s, Streamline Moderne became popular because of the high energy silhouettes its sleek designs created.

These buildings featured rounded edges, large pylons and neon lights, all symbolizing, according to Hess, "invisible forces of speed and energy", that reflect the influx of mobility that cars, locomotives and zeppelins brought.

Drive-in services such as diners, movie theaters and filling stations built with the same principles developed to serve the new American city.

[19] Drive-ins had advanced car-oriented architectural design, as they were built with an expressive utilitarian style, circular and surrounded by a parking lot, allowing all customers equal access from their cars.

[21] Googie architecture exploited this trend by incorporating energy into its design with elements such as the boomerang, diagonals, atomic bursts and bright colors.

[24] McAllister got his start designing fashionable restaurants in Southern California, which led to a series of Streamline Moderne drive-ins during the 1930s; though he did not have formal training as an architect, he had been offered a scholarship at the architecture school at the University of Pennsylvania because of his skill.

The Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations made competing with the Soviets for dominance in space a national priority of considerable urgency and importance.

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.

However, through the efforts of citizens, the city of Downey, and historic preservationists, the structure was rebuilt and reopened in 2009 as a Bob's Big Boy restaurant.

Another remaining example of Googie architecture still in operation is the main terminal at Washington Dulles International Airport, designed by Eero Saarinen in 1958.

This terminal exemplifies the dramatic roof slope, large windows, and generous use of concrete, somewhat similar to Saarinen's TWA Flight Center.

The beachfront resort town of Wildwood, New Jersey, features an array of motel designs, colorfully described by such sub-styles as Vroom, Pu-Pu Platter, Phony Colonee and more.

[34] After the 1960s, following the Apollo 11 Moon landing, the rise of ecology movements against nuclear power, and the de-escalations of the Space Race and the Atomic Age, Googie began to fall out of style.

One of the earliest organizations in the US that advocated for the preservation of Googie architecture was the Los Angeles Conservancy Modern Committee, which was formed in 1984 in response to the demolition of Ship's coffee shop in Westwood and Tiny Naylor's Drive-In in Hollywood.

Googie was also the inspiration for the background art style of animated television series and movies such as Dexter's Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, The Powerpuff Girls, Futurama, George Shrinks, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, My Life as a Teenage Robot, and The Incredibles, as well as the cover of the faux-memoir Based on a True Story by comedian Norm Macdonald.

Books are arranged in chronological order by year of publication: Preservation groups working to save Googie architecture include