Pioneering Chinese American architect Helen Fong, who worked for Armet & Davis, designed many of the interior elements.

The recommendation to hire Armet & Davis came from restaurant kitchen equipment designer Stan Abrams. Abrams collaborated with the architects to integrate the kitchen seamlessly into the restaurant. As a dealer of modern furniture, Abrams also advised the use of the wire chairs designed by Charles and Ray Eames. Because owner Norman Roybark envisioned a chain of restaurants, he sought a unified design with a distinctive image or brand that could be repeated in each restaurant site as a form of advertising.

Armet & Davis designed a total of eight Norms restaurants, including locations in Los Angeles, Culver City, Hawthorne, Huntington Park, Long Beach, and Inglewood. The duo also designed the popular Johnie’s Coffee Shop on Miracle Mile.

Norms La Cienega’s car-friendly design and distinctive modern architecture represent a period of growth and technological optimism in Los Angeles history.

L.A. Googie Coffee Shops

From 1945 to 1965, the California coffee shop, a new restaurant type and architectural style, developed in Southern California in response to the return of prosperity after World War II, rapid population growth, and the rise of the suburbs. Compared with the diners and drive-ins of the pre-war era, the California coffee shop was larger and more comfortable, yet still reasonably priced. It featured indoor seating, expansive menus, and stylish contemporary designs.

The Norms chain emerged as the benefits and look of modernism were becoming more and more accessible to the average citizen in the buildings of everyday life.

As epitomized by Norms, Armet & Davis were major figures in the popularization of California coffee shops and made significant contributions to the development of the Googie architectural style. Although a number of architects shaped the style’s evolution from the drive-in architecture of the 1920s and ’30s, including John Lautner and A. Quincy Jones, Armet & Davis were the most prolific. The pair designed more than twenty-five Googie-style coffee shops in Los Angeles in the 1950s and ’60s.

In countless ways, Norms La Cienega reveals the deeply innovative spirit of modern architecture and culture in Los Angeles in the middle of the century. The open, flowing plan and large glass window walls reflect modernism’s rejection of the traditional box and its interest in blending indoor and outdoor spaces. Its creative spacial configuration, modern engineering, and cutting-edge materials (plastics, stainless steel, formica, etc.) further embody the style and period.

With repeated geometric details reinforcing the chain’s modern brand identity, Norms La Cienega represents Armet & Davis’ first attempt to use architecture as a means of establishing a recognizable brand, a practice that would become a standard of the restaurant industry. Norms was also one of the first California chains to apply the branding concept to a larger, sit-down restaurant. The function of advertising was directly integrated into the building’s design, from the bold neon sign that echoed the shape of the roof, to the well-lit glass walls that put the activity of the restaurant on view to passing motorists.