I’m here to write about our big summer project – our new googie pergola!
We love to BBQ in our back yard and wanted a pergola/arbor to provide shade in the California sun. But what style of pergola to build? Have you ever noticed that pergolas are an architecturally and design-challenged form, as boring in their unchanging conservatism and lack of diversity as mens suits? You either get the squared-off, chunky arts and crafts or the white-washed turned-column colonial. Neither bad on their own, but we really wanted something fresh and something that matched the rest of our house’s style.
Flintstones style stonehenge pergola? No. Gothic with soaring buttresses and garden gnomes as gargoyles? No, but close. Norm’s Diner, 1961, Sherman Way, Van Nuys? Yes; googie!
Googie of course is the vernacular architectural style that exploded (visually as well as figuratively) onto the urban scene in the 1950’s and 60’s, especially in commercial roadside architecture. Space-age coffee shops, bowling alleys, and car washes dazzled alongside the hi-ways and bi-ways of mid-century America.
We designed our pergola, drew out the plans and built it two months ago. Without further ado, here are some pics, followed by inspiration pics of a googular nature.
Many pergolas are the same from every angle; placed in the middle of a property, meant to be circled round like sculptures. But ours is in a corner of the yard; there is a distinct stage-like front and a back. While googie coffee shops unambiguously faced the street, ours faces the Weber grill!
This angle shows the upward sweeping rake of the top, a typical googie feature that symbolized the soaring optimism of the jet age (ours reflects our optimism about impending ribs and mai tai's.) We're also hopeful that those potato vines at the side will leap off the fence and grow up over the top.
Even the angle cut at the top edge of the rafters points toward space. Fly me to the stars!
Here's a shot with the deck furniture in place. There's not much to do with a pergola; you've got to have columns to hold up the top. But I think we innovated with these V-shaped supports, subtly repeated at the rear :)
We found some string lights at Target and hooked them up via outdoor extension cord to an outlet in the basement. Then we got a remote control switch that plugs into the outlet and voila! We can turn on the backyard lights from anywhere! It's magical.
We do a lot of our projects ourselves but, I admit, we obtained some help in building this, especially the level deck (our not-so-level patio was evidence enough of our own crooked tendencies). Our property is on a slight slope, so the level deck means we can sit and eat without toppling over in our chairs while our burgers and margaritas slide off the table. A friend of a friend built this and we had to trade our Wii as part of the barter. I guess that means we just have to give up playing Animal Crossing for the joys of drinking outdoors.
That’s it; we’re loving our googola! Now, on to some inspiration pics. These are all from Googie Architecture Online:
This was one of our main inspiration images; love the way the upward sweep of the interior ceiling seamlessly flows through the glass walls and becomes the floating exterior roof
Hm. Prow-like rafters shooting upward to the stars. Look familiar?
Those great cantilevered and boomerang forms. This gas station would make a perfect pergola as-is!
Hody's coffee shop; cantilevered sloping roofline, v-shaped supports...'All is as it was. the only difference is.....you are there!'
