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by Animats
2488 days ago
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The TWA Flight Center at JFK (1962) is considered "Googie", at least by Wikipedia.[1] That was achieved with the technology of the Googie era. So was the "Theme Building" at LAX (1961) [2]. Both are buildings with vast, swooping curves and exuberant design, like Changi's terminal. Both had problems in the era of TSA. TWA failed, and JetBlue has the TWA terminal now. The huge wings are gone, but now it has 20 security lanes, a "monument to human throughput". The LAX Theme Building has never been very useful; it's had a restaurant inside, but few went there post 9/11, because it's outside security and you'd have to go through screening again. By the late 1960s, big clear-span roofs like the Dulles terminal and the Astrodome were going up. The technical problems had been solved. A bit after the original Googie era, though. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_Center [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_Building |
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As Wikipedia says, it "straddles" various styles including Googie. I don't think a pure Googie building could be so prestigious. The typical Googie structure is low tech and relatively low cost, "flashy and vernacular" as Wikipedia says. Once you start dealing with an architect like Saarinen (TWA) or Pereira (Theme Building) there is something a bit more sophisticated and expensive going on. Those prestigious buildings don't really epitomize the style, even if we consider them to express some aspects of it in retrospect. Googie has more to do with diners, jukebokes and the fins on a car than with "serious" architecture.
The Changi building really couldn't have been built in the 60s. It's one of those load-bearing triangulated structures with a large number of glazing components of different dimensions. It is much simpler, without CAD, to make a smooth reinforced concrete dome/cantilever like the TWA building, or an arch like the Theme Building. Triangulated high-tech building skins like the one on the Gherkin in London (and Changi) are extremely expensive because of the complexity and the need to custom manufacture each component. There is a fetishization of that complexity (it's the main driver of it) in contrast to the more sculptural preoccupations that are evident in the TWA terminal. Saarinen was moulding concrete (not really a Googie concept) and Safdie is blowing bubbles of super high-tech geometry...