Features of Googie include upswept roofs, curvilinear, geometric shapes, and bold use of glass, steel and neon. Googie was also characterized by Space Age designs symbolic of motion, such as boomerangs, flying saucers, diagrammatic atoms and parabolas, and free-form designs such as “soft” parallelograms and an artist’s palette motif. These stylistic conventions represented American society’s fascination with Space Age themes and marketing emphasis on futuristic designs. As with the Art Deco style of the 1910s–1930s, Googie became less valued as time passed, and many buildings in this style have been destroyed. Some examples have been preserved, though, such as the oldest McDonald’s stand (located in Downey, California).
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. The common elements that generally distinguish Googie from other forms of architecture are:
Roofs sloping at an upward angle: This is the one particular element in which architects were creating a unique structure. Many Googie style coffee shops, and other structures, have a roof that appears to be 2/3 of an inverted obtuse triangle. An example of this is the famous, but now closed, Johnie’s Coffee Shop on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Starbursts: Starbursts are an ornament that is common with the Googie style, showing its Space Age and whimsical influences. Perhaps the most notable example of the starburst appears on the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign. The ornamental design is in the form of, as Hess writes, “a high-energy explosion”. This shape is an example of non-utilitarian design, as the star shape has no actual function but merely serves as a design element.
The boomerang shape was another design element that captured movement. It was used structurally in place of a pillar or aesthetically as a stylized arrow. Hess writes that the boomerang was a stylistic rendering of a directional energy field.
