Acquisition Information
Arrangement
Access
Publication Rights
Biographical/Historical Note
Scope and Content of Collection
Preferred Citation
Processing History
Separated Materials
Contributing Institution: Special Collections
Title: Franklin D. Israel papers
Creator: Israel, Franklin D.
Identifier/Call Number: 2009.M.6
Physical Description: 659.2 Linear Feet(360 boxes, 410 flatfiles, 23 boxed rolls)
Date (inclusive): 1967-1996
Physical Location: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the
catalog record for this collection. Click here for the
access policy .
Abstract: Los Angeles-based architect Frank Israel contributed substantially toward the architectural discourse of the 1980s and early
1990s, and served as a key link between the modernist generation of California architects and the work of current practitioners.
The archive comprises about 8,000 original drawings and prints, 38 models, photographs, articles, and extensive office records
and correspondence files that encompass Israel's design process while also providing insight into the establishment of firms
and modern architectural business practice.
Language of Material: Collection material is in English.
Acquisition Information
Acquired in 2009.
Arrangement
Arranged in three series: Series I. Project records, 1972-1996; Series II. Other professional papers, 1967-1996; Series III.
Personal papers, 1973-1996.
Access
Open for use by qualified researchers, with the exception of the unreformatted audio-visual material and computer files. Due
to privacy issues, Boxes 231A-231D and 325-328 are sealed until 2062.
Publication Rights
Biographical/Historical Note
Franklin D. Israel was born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 2, 1945. He received his architectural training at Yale University
and at Columbia University, where he earned his master's degree in 1971. Two years later, Israel was awarded the Rome Prize.
His two year stay in Rome proved extremely important not only because of his studies of the Italian and Northern European
Baroque, but also because of his introduction to the work of the Italian architect Carlo Scarpa (1906-1978) and his encounters
with American practitioners, such as Richard Meier, and architectural historians such as James Ackerman. Israel moved to Los
Angeles in 1977 to teach architecture at UCLA and start his own architectural design office. He was soon employed in the film
industry, working as a set designer for several movies including
Star Trek: The Motion Picture. This time spent in the film studios enabled him to secure a number of early projects from clients in the entertainment industry,
including actor Joel Grey and film director Robert Altman, for whom he designed houses. He also designed office buildings
for film and record production companies in Hollywood.
Israel's earliest work is decidedly postmodern. Having studied with Robert A.M. Stern and Romaldo Giurgola, two leaders of
the postmodern era in New York, Israel was well trained to look at historical precedent and adopt details from buildings created
in the past into his own designs. His Clark House (Hollywood, 1980, unexecuted) is probably the best example. Based on Vignola's
Villa Farnese in Caprarola (1559-1573), the house is – as is the historical example – pentagonal in shape with a circular
court in its center. The proportions of all rooms around the court were determined by those of the Villa Farnese. The facades,
however, were loose adaptations of the 16th-century example and were designed to frame the view from each side of the building.
Israel began to study the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, Rudolph Schindler, Richard Neutra, and other modernists in the region
soon after his arrival in Los Angeles, where Southern California modernist architecture as a whole became a rich source of
inspiration for Israel's design work. Historical references to the classical architecture of Italy and France soon disappeared
from his studio and a new formal language took root in which one can recognize details borrowed from architects he admired
but integrated into solutions entirely his own. Engaging with the conflict between organic and tectonic architecture, he
sought to combine the two, to give his buildings a solid structure and then add a skin that, rather than being no more than
a wrap around the space (as was typical in the work of early 20th-century modernists), instead draws attention to the form
and makes the abstract structure more intimate. His buildings always combine a smoothly surfaced concrete, steel, or hardwood
structure with wood and stucco shapes painted in intense, Luis Barragán-like colors. Colorful and playful, his buildings are
rendered warmer and more palatable than the sterile white, modernist architecture of the periods immediately before and after
the Second World War, and it was these characteristics that increased this profile and brought him numerous clients.
Though he had moved away from the use of specific historical precedents, Israel remained interested in history, making distinctions
between perpetuating traditions and creating memorable spatial patterns based on universal scenarios he saw as being used
repeatedly throughout history. Placed in former industrial buildings or warehouses, offices such as those for Propaganda Films
or Virgin Records are organized as small villages or, as Israel himself liked to call them, "cities within." Israel connected
the various elements of an office (meeting rooms, workstations, and editing rooms) through streets and plazas. In the Propaganda
Films office, there is even one meeting room that looks like a baptistery placed on a piazza next to a ship- or church-like
group of executive offices. Such references to memory and historic precedents presented within a modern context are perfect
examples of the architectural debate of the period, when alternatives were sought for a modernism that had lost all its glamour
for a younger generation.
Frank Israel died June 10, 1996 due to complication from AIDS. At the age when most architects are still trying to find the
ideal client and job, Israel had already created a substantial body of work, had had two monographic exhibitions at major
art museums (the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, 1988, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, 1995), and counted
the most renowned architects in the United States (including Richard Meier, Robert A.M. Stern, Richard Weinstein, and especially
Frank Gehry and Philip Johnson) amongst his greatest supporters.
Scope and Content of Collection
The Franklin D. Israel papers detail the brief but substantial career of the Los Angeles-based architect and his design firm,
encompassing design processes while also providing insight into the establishment of firms and modern architectural business
practice. The archive is an important resource for researchers wishing to study the developments in California architecture
after modernism had fallen out of fashion.
Series I contains project drawings and records, with the bulk of the material comprising architectural projects from the late-1980s
to the mid-1990s. Original drawings, prints, models, photographs, and extensive documentation and correspondence files form
the core of this series. Most of Israel's creative output is represented here, from private residences such as the Goldberg/Bean
House (Hollywood, 1991) and the Drager House (Berkeley, 1992), both of which received "Record Houses" awards, to the business
offices of film and record production companies such as Propaganda Films (Hollywood, 1988) and Virgin Records (Beverly Hills,
1991). Other notable projects include the art pavilion for Frederick Weisman (Beverly Hills, 1991), built to house one of
the largest private collections of contemporary art in the world. Instances of Israel's non-architectural design work and
consulting, including furniture and interior design, are also represented.
Series II documents the professional career of Frank Israel. The bulk of this series includes extensive administrative and
financial documentation of Israel's design firm, Franklin D. Israel Design Associates (FDIDA), and materials related to exhibitions,
articles, photographs, and publication files, including production materials for larger publications such as Rizzoli International's
1992 monograph surveying the work of Frank Israel. Documentation of other professional activities, such as service on competition
juries, and lectures are also included along with files relating to Israel's education and teaching career, awards and honors,
articles and ephemera written by Frank Israel, and general correspondence.
Series III, a small series of personal papers, completes the archive.
Preferred Citation
Franklin D. Israel Papers, 1967-1996, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 2009.M.6
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2009m6
Processing History
In 2012 with grant funding from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), Laura Dominguez and Mitchell Erzinger
processed the collection and created the inventory under the supervision of Ann Harrison. The descriptive notes were derived
from curatorial records.
Separated Materials
Several water-damaged periodicals without a clear connection to Israel's work were deaccessioned:
Architectural Digest: 1979, March, April, May, September; 1980, June, October, December; 1981, May; 1982, August, September, December; 1983, January,
June, August
Architectural Digest, Italian edition: 1983 April
Vanity Fair: 1983 July
GQ: 1982 June
House & Garden: 1983, January, February
California: 1982 February
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Interior architecture
Architecture, Postmodern
Architecture, Modern -- 20th century -- California, Southern
Architectural firms
Architectural drawings (visual works)
Architectural practice -- United States
Architectural models
Architectural drawings -- United States -- 20th century
Architects -- California -- Los Angeles
Architects -- Archives