Goodbye bright colors and unusual shapes. Today, the design is minimal and sleek. Most fast-food restaurants are built to maximize efficiency, not catch motorists’ attention. One critic has called this trend “faux five-star restaurants” intended to make customers forget they are eating greasy fries and burgers.

The chains now sport nearly identical looks. Call it the gentrification of fast-food design. — CNN

Tulsa hosts a building that looks a lot like George and Jane Jetsons’ home in the cartoon, or perhaps a squat version of Seattle’s Space Needle – shaped like a wheel on its side perched on a stick.

The house recently hit the market, with an asking price of $415,000. But unfortunately for any time travelers, it has already been snapped up. — The Guardian

That the skin is an exercise in advanced digital fabrication, applied with such élan is, in itself, a proclamation, a sort of late-career renaissance, which thrusts the firm into a next generation spotlight.

Whether naively assuming (wrongly) that Los Angeles was ready for a jolt of architectural electricity, or sincerely reflecting a populist genre (rightly), Kohn succeeded in outflanking its neighbors, and disrupting the conventions governing the museum establishment. — Craig Hodgetts – formmag.net

Built in 1962, the People’s Bank has distinct glossy, off-teal bricks and a sawtooth, vaulted rooftop. The building is not only one of the finest remaining examples of Googie commercial architecture in Kentucky — it is one of the finest examples in the nation. However, after years of neglect, locals are working to ensure that the building isn’t leveled into a movie theater parking lot. — hyperallergic.com

Developer Jason Illoulian of Faring Capital is the new owner of the land under the restaurant and its 43 parking spaces ... his plan: To build a “community of shops” where the parking lot now stands. [...]

“It’s such a beautiful building and that sign is just like fucking awesome,” he says.

Will there be room in this new village for an $11.99 steak dinner? “We’re hoping to keep it as a 24- hour diner,” says Illoulian of the restaurant space. “Whether it’s Norms or somebody else.” — lamag.com

At a hearing earlier today, Los Angeles’ Culture Heritage Commission voted to consider granting Historic-Cultural Monument status to Norms Coffee Shop on La Cienega. This would protect the iconic building in the Googie modern style until a final decision is made by the commission. According to the Los Angeles Conservancy, the new owners of Norms were issued a demolition permit on January 5, triggering a wave of outrage from architectural preservationists. — hyperallergic.com

Googie was used as a deragatory term almost from the start — born in Southern California and named for a West Hollywood coffee shop designed in 1949 by John Lautner, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. Architecture critic Douglas Haskell was the first to use “Googie” to describe the architectural movement, after driving by the West Hollywood coffee shop and finally feeling like he had found a name for this style that was flourishing in the postwar era. — blogs.smithsonianmag.com

Davis incorporated aerodynamic designs into his whimsical midcentury coffee shops, including the original Norms on La Cienega Boulevard in L.A. and Pann's near Westchester, to attract passing motorists. — latimes.com