Googie Redux: Ultramodern Roadside Architecture

Googie Redux: Ultramodern Roadside Architecture
by Alan Hess

Googie Redux: Ultramodern Roadside Architecture
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Book Summary Information

Author: Alan Hess
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2004-10-14
ISBN: 081184272X
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Chronicle Books

Book Reviews of Googie Redux: Ultramodern Roadside Architecture

Book Review: Achingly Beautiful
Summary: 5 Stars

Googie was fading by the time I came along, but even in the remote area of the Midwest that I grew up in, its influence was felt. As a child, I didn't know what those slanted roofs and skewered-ball sign spires were called or where they came from, but I found their spacey, cartoonish vibe appealing (if increasingly worn and ill-maintained as the 70s wore on). This book, "Googie Redux," puts "ultramodern roadside architecture" in historical context and tells the stories of the commercial architects who invented Googie, primarily in Southern California. There's also an excellent section on automotive design of the postwar era, the ideas which inspired it, and its relation to Googie architecture. Fans of Americana, architecture, capitalism, and pop culture in general will adore this thick compendium of intelligent analysis and, in many cases, superb photographs documenting the glorious heyday and painful decline of this once-dominant style. Though Googie was shunned by the architectural establishment in its time, it is now given its due in this beautiful book. Buy it, read it, and catch a glimpse of an era in which roadside architecture was more than just the series of bland, inoffensive, lookalike boxes dispensing burgers, burritos, and coffee that we must suffer today. This book will feed your postwar fantasies and break your heart when you realize how homogenized commercial architecture has become.

Summary of Googie Redux: Ultramodern Roadside Architecture

A thoroughly revised and significantly expanded edition of the popular 1980s original, Googie Redux is the authoritative history of the mid-20th century icon that ignited an architectural revolution: the coffee shop. Emblematic of Southern California car culture, stylized eateries and other roadside buildings built from the 1930s to the 1950s were dismissed as lowbrow stylistic folly in their heyday. Yet, as Alan Hess points out, in many ways they were the realization of modern architecture's grand promises. They were populist, employed new materials, and captured their purpose, place, and culture as vividly as any great architectural style. The influential original edition helped to spark a robust preservation movement and kick-started the reappreciation of mid-century architecture and design. This latest edition features extensive up-to-date research and dozens of rarely seen and newly found photographs. Googie Redux is the definitive document of a style born in California that has spread to all corners of the world.

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