You may not cognize the name Gin D. Wong , but you definitely recognize his oeuvre . He ’s creditworthy for some of the most iconic edifice in Los Angeles , including the Theme Building at the Los Angeles Airport ( pictured above ) , and he even inhale the couturier of the legendary 1962 animated idiot box show The Jetsons . Wong died on September 1st at the age of 94 .
Wong designed not only the 1960 Theme Building ( perhaps intimately make love as something like “ The starship ” to travelers at LAX ) , but he was also instrumental in erecting other icons of midcentury modern designing .
For instance , Wong designed the Union 76 gas place in Beverly Hills , with its tremendous overdone roof , which was discharge in 1965 . And he worked on the CBS Television City Building , another modernist masterpiece , which was completedin 1952 .
The Theme Building at Los Angeles International Airport (Photo by Matt Novak)
Wong also function on the now defunctMarineland of the Pacificin Palos Verdes which was a stem car park that opened a year before Disneyland in 1954 , and the Transamerica edifice in San Francisco , one of the most recognisable pieces of that city ’s skyline .
“ It ’s not muddied up , ” Wong say of the Transamerica building , make his design philosophy decipherable . “ It ’s just simple , clear intent . ”
Wong babble about some of his most important works during a 2013 interview that can be viewedon YouTube .
And while he had no direct hand in the creation of the CBS TV show The Jetsons , anyone conversant with the building he help design will immediately see his influence . The admixture of midcentury modern and Southern California ’s Googie elan are the foundation of The Jetsons macrocosm . And the futuristic world of George Jetson and his iconic manner would n’t have been the same without Wong .
We explored this design stylus in deepness back in 2012 , during the 50th anniversary ofThe Jetsons , as well as in our study of Googie ’s 21st one C stylemore broadly . And despite being retro - futurist , there ’s still something other worldly and affirmative about it all .
But even though Wong influenced the design of Southern California so staggeringly , theLos Angeles Timesexplains that he never quite became a household name in the computer architecture scene .
After graduation exercise , he went to mold for Pereira & Luckman and later on stuck with his mentor to facilitate run Pereira & Associates , where he became managing director of design and then the firm ’s United States President . He was a star of those firms . He led the large design team that modernize LAX in the 1950s , readying the drome for the years of jet travel . But it was Pereira , the name partner , who land on the cover of Time , his confident expression and impressive head of fuzz under a streamer reading “ Vistas for the Future . ”
When that issue hit newsstands in September 1963 , very few Angelenos would have recognized Wong ’s name . He was a Chinese American designer in a firm top by a maestro of architectural merchandising and occupation evolution . For all the daring of Wong ’s work , he was destined to remain one of the associates .
Born on September 17 , 1922 , in Guangzhou , China , Wong moved to Los Angeles when he was 9 old age old . And while there have always been fighting about the meaning of “ writing ” in the earthly concern of architecture , Wong ’s story is one of grandness for scholars considering the role of race in who gets credit for a particular workplace .
Even citizenry who consider themselves deeply invested in architecture may have never learn Wong ’s name , as the Los Angeles Timespoints out . And that ’s a shame . Not only for the computer architecture community of interests , but for those of us who take account his influence on other aspect of culture .
Yes , The Jetsons may not be the most gamy - brow bequest of Wong ’s to consider . But for those of us who credit the show with giving us technologically affirmative visions of the time to come , it would n’t have been the same without him . The energiser who gave us that macrocosm dwell and breathed Wong ’s macrocosm as they drove around Burbank and Los Angeles in the fifties and sixty . The blueprint of that Jetsonian world was as much his as it was Hanna - Barbera ’s .
RIP Mr. Wong . We thank you for a steady and affirmative glimpse of tomorrow that amazingly still endure today .
[ New York TimesandLos Angeles Times ]
ArchitectureLos AngelesThe Jetsons
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