As an example of programmatic architecture, The Donut Hole is one of Southern California’s ver

As an example of programmatic architecture, The Donut Hole is one of Southern California’s very best. Designed by an unknown genius person, the shop is a wood-and-stucco one-story commercial building split into two halves with a driveway in the middle, bracketed at each end by an enormous fiberglass donut. The driveway allows customers to drive right through the center to place and pick up their orders, and the donuts obviously serve to advertise the shop’s product while delighting all who pass by. This store was the second of five Donut Hole locations, but the only one that actually had donuts as part of its architecture. It is perhaps no coincidence that it is the only Donut Hole that survives intact. Image and text from the University of Virginia’s Richard Guy Wilson Architecture Archive in JSTOR.