Franklin D. Israel

Acclaimed Los Angeles architect Franklin D. Israel's (1945-1996) innovative residential projects and office interiors made him one of the most talked-about designers of his generation. In this vivid narrative, architectural historian Todd Gannon draws on archival resources, analyses of Israel's buildings, and recent interviews with the architect's colleagues, clients, and contemporaries, including Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, and Robert A. M. Stern. Gannon traces Israel's development from his early years and career on the East Coast to his formative world travels and residence at the American Academy in Rome. 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 fifty. Franklin D. Israel is a compelling work of architectural history and biography that chronicles one gay man's engagement with the largely heteronormative world of American architectural culture while exploring the achievement of this central figure in the still largely unstudied history of late twentieth-century avant-garde Los Angeles architecture.