The other day, Clive Thompson’s Linkfest newsletter led me to a nice article that deals with ‘Googie architecture’ – those US mid-century buildings with futuristic, extravagant shapes and loud neon lights that stand on the streets and are now being demolished piece by piece because they are too expensive to maintain. The fact that consumption is no longer as entertaining as it used to be has finally hit one of the most cheerful embodiments of this very idea.
I find the historical-media comparison that Anna Kodé makes interesting. The equivalent of today’s smartphone screens back then, she suggests, was the windscreen of a passing car. The shops are thus part of a content that consists of the passing landscape. Companies vie for the attention of motorized customers with their buildings.
Just as today’s brands are built to shine on Instagram and TikTok, Googie structures were built to entice through a car window. They were usually at prominent intersections, and along with the neon signs, they had large glass windows ‘to show off the interior to people as they drove by,’ Mr Hess said. ‘People would look in and see a lot of happy diners. The whole building was a three-dimensional billboard displaying the colour and the activity and the people.
The window as a screen – a classic, in this case, literal and charming metaphor. The world is a stage that is viewed from the safety of the vehicle’s auditorium and, at the same time, offers the possibility of being entered—consumption as a theatre play that can be observed or acted out.
Visually, from the concrete point of view of the observer, these diners, motels, and grocery stores – like every building – touch and connect the ground and the earth. However, they are explicitly designed to cast the most striking shapes, colors, and signals possible into the smoothness of the sky. Therein lies their improbable, lavish beauty, which is intended to attract customers.
A multi-stage experience unfolds for the customer: the first is the aforementioned view from the car – the outline of a bright, cheerful confusion emerges against the sky. Stage two consists of the surfaces and lights that arise within this outline, indicating the content within the structure. Finally, level three is the space that opens up behind the windows (now of the shop), with furnishings, consumers, and goods.
If you think about the flatness of contemporary screens, this alternation between two- and three-dimensionality and the staggering of the levels is particularly appealing. This architecture’s nostalgia is not (only) due to the historicity of a specific architectural style and even less to a longing for the ‘good old days’. Rather, it is the special folding, the light, and the generous gestures of these buildings that create a unique landscape for moving bodies and wandering eyes. Apart from consumerist promises and social coding, this is simply a visual perception feast.
