“Who hasn’t had a burger and fries at a Denny’s or Bob’s Big Boy? There are thousands of them, not just in Los Angeles, where they were born, but across the country. These family restaurants are core to how America defined itself after World War II. Cars, families, space flight, modernism….the new world order…. And who defined that fun and futuristic look? Our pioneering LA woman architect: Helen Fong.”
So begins the intro to “Fast Food and Radical Rooflines: Helen Fong Shapes Los Angeles Coffee Shops,” Episode 3 in the New Angle: Voice podcast series, produced by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation to detail “the struggles and triumphs of six leading women who have personified achievement in a primarily male dominated field.”
As chronicled in Wikipedia, Helen Liu Fong (January 14, 1927–April 17, 2005) was a Chinese-American architect and interior designer from Los Angeles. She was an important figure in the Googie architecture movement, designing futuristic buildings like Norms Restaurant, the Holiday Bowl, Bob’s Big Boy, and Pann’s Coffee Shop that helped usher in an era of boomerang angles, dynamic forms and neon lights. Fong became one of the first women to join the American Institute of Architects. She worked with Armet and Davis on many of her most well-known projects.
Other episodes in the New Angle: Voice series include:
“Natalie de Blois – To Tell The Truth”
“Norma Sklarek: An Extremely Bold Hand”
“Florence Knoll: Total Design”
