The Theme Building at LAX is one of the most famous examples of Googie architecture, which was born in California in the 1950s and 60s.Architecture and Design Film Festival/Supplied
Love it or hate it, RuPaul’s Drag Race has become a major cultural touchstone, elevating the once-underground art form of drag to heights filmmaker John Waters or the minds behind The Rocky Horror Picture Show never dreamed possible. And that riot of colour, over-the-top costumes, sass and silliness was, during the pandemic (and still is), exactly the right dose of dopamine many of us needed to carry on.
Googie is the drag of the architecture world. It’s colourful, it wears a costume that amplifies and exaggerates Modernism, there is sass aplenty, and the pleasure it generates is addictive. And, like drag, everyone with an open mind is invited to the party.
“Googie is a chapter in the story of modern architecture as important as any other,” confirms California-based architecture critic Alan Hess just before the credits roll to close Jake Gorst’s new film, Googie. “Good architecture is good architecture. . . Googie architecture is a democratic architecture; it is meant to improve the lives of the average person going about their daily life.”
Architecture and Design Film Festival/Supplied
The film is one of 11 being screened at this year’s Architecture and Design Film Festival (ADFF), which takes place from Nov. 4 to Nov. 7 at the TIFF Lightbox in Toronto.
“Do not ignore Googie,” adds humorist/historian Charles Phoenix. “Googie is important, Googie has a place in the scheme of all architectural styles.”
They’re right. But what place? Well, as the film suggests, it’s not downtown, although the Los Angeles restaurant that gave the style its name, Googie’s (John Lautner, 1949), was located on a rather dense patch of Sunset Boulevard about a block away from the Chateau Marmont. It’s some time after neon signs decamped from shop windows to become flashing beacons that could be spotted from the freeway. It’s when the buildings themselves, using unorthodox shapes, became lantern-like flycatchers (well, people-catchers) as prominent as the signage, perhaps more so. And it could not have been born anywhere but California in the 1950s and 60s – although it did spread. It died by the time of the moon landing and Richard Nixon.
To set the stage, the 58-minute film discusses the postwar suburban expansion and how plentiful jobs meant the explosion of automobile ownership. But, since international travel was still a luxury, most folks took pleasure drives in their own regions . . . and they needed to stop and eat. Or bowl. Or get the car washed.
Googie’s predecessors, says the film, were the circular drive-ins and diners of the 1930s, the programmatic architecture of the 1940s, such as the hotdog-shaped Tail o’ the Pup, or the early-1950s experiments with novelty signage, such as Randy’s Donuts giant rooftop doughnut. These, says Mr. Hess, created the “perfect storm of elements to create Googie.”
By the time Googie-masters Louis Armét and Eldon Davis brought the style to its zenith, flamboyant and buoyant roofs became floating sculpture with no apparent support, expanses of glass were so large potential customers could see inside long before entering, and materials were so futuristic (Formica, vinyl, plastic, steel) a feeling of optimism was transmitted instantly (although, with the use of fieldstone in many, there was a Flintstones meets The Jetsons element).
It was, says Mr. Hess, “a whole new type of building.”
“It’s like an event you don’t forget,” says Mr. Phoenix. “You go to a Googie restaurant, and it created an impression.”
Mark Myer's film, The Tower That Built a City, asks the question: 'Who exactly designed the tower?'Architecture and Design Film Festival/Supplied
The Canadian National Tower, as it was rising in the early-1970s, created a deep impression on Torontonians. How could it not? Opening Mark Myer’s 90-minute film, The Tower That Built a City, architect John Andrews says that while it was built “primarily . . . as a communications device,” it quickly took on a “much more significant role” that “could be likened to the Sydney Opera House in that it’s serving not only the function for which it was built but it’s become a very definite symbol of the city.”
Tracking backward from Toronto’s snatching of Montreal’s crown to become Canada’s largest city – right around the same time the CN Tower opened in 1976 – to the 1960s and the city’s proposal for “Metro Centre,” which had an early, three-antennaed version of the tower as part of a large development of office towers (81 hectares), the film asks a very important question: “Who exactly designed the tower?”
The answer, however, has more than three prongs. There was the Australian, John Andrews, of course, and then there was Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden (WZMH), but there were also architects Roger Du Toit and Ned Baldwin, and engineers such as Nicolet Carrier Dressel, Jamir Mardukhi and Dr. Franz Knoll. Dr. Knoll, the film posits, is to be credited with the joining of the three independent legs into one sculptural, graceful shape.
A dig through the architectural history of Toronto’s CN Tower
After describing the construction of the landmark – “Olga” the helicopter is a highlight – the film zooms forward to spend the next 45 minutes considering the city’s coming-of-age vis-a-vis sports (the Blue Jays arrived a year after the tower opened), theatre, television (Moses Znaimer says it’s “up there with the Eiffel Tower and the other great erections of the world”), multiculturalism and music (specifically, the pioneering work of CFNY, Q107 and MuchMusic).
While the CN Tower itself didn’t bring about those attitudes, it did act as an enormous, concrete push-pin: We are here. We are doing great things. We may be a little bit shy, but come and have a look.
And a half-century later, the city’s inferiority complex has finally evaporated: “It’s an interesting place to be,” finishes music video director Director X (Julien Christian Lutz). “It is a kid that didn’t think they were cool but then realized maybe they’re cool.”
ADFF: Toronto runs from Nov. 4 to 7 at the TIFF Lightbox (350 King St. W.). Tickets available through the website: adfilmfest.com/adff-toronto My drag persona, Irma Girdle, will be on hand to discuss Googie after the screening on Saturday, Nov. 7. along with the Toronto Society of Architects.