> H O M E

How do you know when someone truly cares? Well, in my case it’s when they get you a book about Roadside coffee shop architecture of the 50’s in the Los Angeles area. It is just so appropriate — it’s pretty cool that she found something I wouldn’t even have thought to ask for.

I’m thrilled. The book is amazing, with a wealth of pictures and an insightful commentary documenting the emergence and popularity of Googie architecture (aka Populuxe — take a look at the Googie Architecture Online Gallery for some prime examples). Although a lot of it is dedicated to coffee shops and fast food joints, it’s never a dull read thanks to the wide variety of shapes and ideas of the Space Age. It also has one chapter covering Las Vegas, appropriately opening with a quote from Learning from Las Vegas — The archetypal Los Angeles will become our Rome and Las Vegas our Florence. Although you can find Googie and Giant Object architecture (like that famous hot dog stand that looks like a giant hot dog, or our very own Orange Julep in Montreal) in many places, these two cities definitely capture the essence of what it is, and most importantly why it came to be — the need to have large eye-catching, immediately recognizable structures appealing to motorists on the wide avenues of the sprawling southwestern cities.

The book got me thinking about the scale and design of those places — they are clearly designed to fit in the middle of a moderately-sized parking lot on a wide multi-lane boulevard, not in the tightly packed environment of downtown Pittsburgh or Boston. This tight relationship between populuxe and suburban car-centric development patterns makes it something of a guilty pleasure for me given my car-free lifestyle and overall views on cities and urban development. I guess those repeated trips to LA as a young kid and then teenager really shaped my concept of a large modern city, and for the past 6 or 7 years I’ve been in the process of opening up to other types of urban lifestyles. That is probably a good thing as I’ve come to appreciate the benefits of East coast and European-style urban living — but having this book on my coffee table is bringing more comfort than I would have suspected.