Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The euphoria about the future that followed World War II permeated the outlooks of architects, who, influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright and with ready access to remarkable new construction material and building techniques spawned by the war technologies, faced the intriguing prospect of redesigning the post war world. Initially the futuristic designs were outrageous, and detractors labeled these structures the Googie School of Architecture after a particularly outlandish coffee shop in Los Angeles. Googie would seem far from outlandish today as those once controversial design elements have become commonplace in both commercial and residential architecture. Author Alan Hess traces the evolution of these early post war designs in a lively yet learned essay profusely illustrated with both color and black-and-white photography. Googie:Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture is a nostalgic trip back to the Fifties and a look forward at the architectural future.

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Publishers Weekly Review

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 (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved