The Colorful Geometry of Franklin D. Israel’s LA

Franklin D. Israel arrived in Los Angeles from New York City in 1977 to teach architecture at UCLA. There, the budding architect—who had studied with Louis Kahn and was mentored by Frank Gehry—found a spirit of freedom and experimentation that fueled his own innovative work.

After designing movie sets, Israel created offices for Virgin Records and independent film companies like Limelight Productions. He was soon sought after in the residential world, devising homes for the Hollywood elite, including director Robert Altman. But in 1996, Israel’s life was cut short at the age of 50 due to AIDS-related complications.

Today, he is considered one of the “LA Ten,” a loose affiliation of experimental architects who were known for contributing novel structures to Los Angeles during the late 20th century, including luminaries like Gehry, the designer of Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Israel’s works remain important today and were recently immortalized in the new Getty Research Institute book Franklin D. Israel: A Life in Architecture.

“Frank Israel’s architecture was pivotal in positioning Los Angeles at the center of global architectural discourse,” says Gary Riichirō-Fox, assistant curator at the Getty Research Institute. “His architecture deftly trafficked in multiple postmodernisms, with a clear commitment to experimentation, on one hand, and a refined capacity for synthesis, on the other. This rendered his architecture an especially powerful agent in reshaping what Los Angeles had to offer architecture practice at a global scale.”

While many of Israel’s structures have been demolished or altered beyond recognition, some still stand in Los Angeles today, demonstrating the architect’s geometric genius. Cubes, cylinders, and triangular forms rise from streets and hills, bathed in vivid pigments, and offer a sense of dynamism and play to a free-spirited city from one of the most gifted architects of his generation.

Here is a snapshot of Israel’s bright legacy in Los Angeles.

Weisman Pavilion at the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Frederick R. Weisman wanted to expand his Holmby Hills estate to include a gallery for his private collection of contemporary art, one of the largest in the world. He hired Israel and project architect Sean Howe, who imagined a massive art barn where an old garden shed already existed. How big to make it? That depended on the works it would showcase: abstractions by Frank Stella and Donald Judd, and two neon-painted motorcycles by Keith Haring and graffiti artist LA II (Angel Ortiz), to name a few. The pavilion was completed in 1991 and can be accessed by the public by appointment.

Howard D. Goldberg and Jim Bean House

Originally a 1950 Hollywood Hills ranch house, the talent agent/real estate investor couple who owned it recruited Israel to reenvision it to accommodate their opposing tastes. One preferred sleek minimalism, and the other liked a homeyness. Ranch houses “are truly open-ended,” Israel once said. “They fulfill the American dream.” He kept the bones of the structure, which curves along the street, and added a master suite and an upper-level office. He used plywood, sheet metal, stucco, and eye-popping pigmentation inside and out. The home has echoes of Gehry’s Winton Guest House, with its color-blocked, interconnected forms and sense of fun and musicality.

Arango-Berry House

Another couple—one-half of whom grew up in John Lautner’s spectacular Arango Marbrisa House in Acapulco—purchased a 1950s post-and-beam home with incredible views above Sunset Boulevard. They enlisted Israel, with his prowess for creating rich, stand-alone spaces inside buildings (he called them “cities within”). The architect stripped the structure down to two rectangular, gabled volumes, enclosed them, and added a long wall through the point where they meet as a unifying throughline. Israel was known for arranging all rooms around a central line for symmetry purposes, like a spine. He also designed a leather seating unit with FinPly (a birch plywood used for concrete formwork), as well as several built-ins to elegantly conceal electronics.

Bay Cities Garage (originally the Bright and Associates office)

Gehry recommended Israel for the commission of creating an office space for branding company Bright and Associates in the former three-building headquarters of Charles and Ray Eames. Israel used sheet metal, glass, and steel to separate spaces and add adornments to the facade to unify the structures. He also painted interior spaces in hues like mustard yellow and cornflower blue. The dynamic, industrial workspace ended up being one of his most successful projects and was included in Time magazine’s “Best of the ’90s” list.

Roberts House

This milk carton-shaped home looms above the Lake Hollywood Reservoir. Designed for owner and director Randy Roberts—who had a love of Robert A. M. Stern’s neotraditional buildings—it was originally another unremarkable 1950s ranch house. Israel transformed the spaces to imbue style and orderliness, adding a new central axis that connected a tower bridge to the kitchen. On the opposite side of the home, he created studios, children’s bedrooms, and a library.

Want to learn more about this influential architect? Israel’s archive is held at the Getty Research Institute and includes original drawings, prints, models, photographs, books, office records, and three hours of audio interviews with architectural historian Thomas Hines. You can search the Franklin D. Israel’s archive at the Getty Research Institute here.