Googie: Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture

The rhythmic and kinetic Googie style, a name prompted by John Lautner's 1949 design for Googie's restaurant in Los Angeles, evolved from the '30s Streamline Moderne. With wit and verve, Hess traces the history of Googie, showing how Lautner, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, adapted Wright's concepts to the roadside environment. There were many other influences and parallels, from plastic and Formica to the tailfin to the set design for MGM's Forbidden Planet (1956), and Hess examines them all in this extensively researched and highly entertaining study, concluding with a ""Guided Tour of Googie''a list of existing coffee shops, car washes, motels, drive-in churches and hamburger stands that have thus far escaped the wreckers. Photos not seen by PW. February