A New Biography Captures Franklin D. Israel’s Brief but Influential Career

We often hear that history flatters the past by forgetting half of it. Although we shouldn’t need to be reminded of the lives taken by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the artistic and architectural potential lost because of it, every now and again there is good reason to reflect. Todd Gannon’s newly published biography, Franklin D. Israel: A Life in Architecture, makes that point perfectly. Israel, best known for the Weisman Pavilion (1991) in Los Angeles and the Dan House (1995) in Malibu, was only 50 years old when he died in 1996, the age at which most architects just start to blossom.

Franklin D. Israel: A Life in Architecture, by Todd Gannon. Getty Publications, 256 pages, $60.