Dazzling New Monograph Charts Career of Pioneering Architect Franklin D. Israel

Born on the East Coast and trained at the American Academy in Rome, acclaimed architect Franklin D. Israel (1945–96) became best known for his innovative residential projects and office interiors in Los Angeles.

This vivid new volume offers the first account of Israel’s career of nearly 30 years. Architectural historian Todd Gannon draws on archival resources from the Getty Research Institute, analyses of Israel’s buildings, and interviews with the architect’s colleagues, clients, and contemporaries, including Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, and Robert A. M. Stern. The author guides readers through the Los Angeles architectural context, Israel’s influential teaching at UCLA, his dalliance with Hollywood, and the personal motivations behind his architecture and design work—all aspects of an influential career that was cut short by his death from AIDS-related complications at the age of 50.

Franklin D. Israel: A Life in Architecture (Getty Research Institute, $60) is a compelling work of architectural history and biography, chronicling one gay man’s engagement with the largely heteronormative world of American architectural culture. Gannon positions Israel’s life and work as a prism through which to examine the unraveling of orthodox modern architecture in the United States and to gain insight into the still largely unstudied history of late 20th-century avant-garde architecture in Southern California.