Googie Goth

Published 8:32 pm Friday, May 16, 2008

Googi: Sounds like a ’70s band or a nasal condition or a snowboarding move, doesn’t it?

It’s actually a style of architecture. And we have one of the tallest examples right here in the Northwest: the Space Needle.

Googie is a mix of California car culture and the Space Age: upswept roofs, large domes, sheet glass windows, exposed steel beams and shapes like boomerrangs, starbursts and flying saucers. Think Disney’s Tomorrowland.

The style thrived in the 1950s and 1960s, mostly as motels, coffee shops and bowling alleys.

It got its name when a Yale architect professor drove by Googie’s Coffee Shop in Los Angeles and screeched: “Stop the car! This is Googie architecture.”

Googie’s Coffee Shop was designed by John Lautner. Lautner is credited with originating the design aesthetic now known as Googie, which was appropriated and refined by others.

It’s also called Raygun Gothic, doo-wop and populuxe.

The expert on all things Googie, California architect critic Alan Hess, will speak at 6:30 p.m. Tuesdayat the Swedish Cultural Center, 1920 Dexter Ave. N., Seattle. Tickets cost $10 plus a service fee. Buy them online in advance at www.docomomo-wewa.org/events.php.

Debra Smith Herald Writer