FRANKLIN ISRAEL, died on this date, (b: 1945); Israel was born in Brooklyn and  was an American architect best known for his designs for private residences and offices for film production companies in Los Angeles. He was a member of the L.A. Ten, “a loosely affiliated cadre of architects” working in Los Angeles during the 1980s and 1990s.

Israel began studying philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, but was drawn to architecture and switched to studying with renowned architect Louis Kahn. He did postgraduate work at Yale University and then received his master of architecture from Columbia University.

Widely regarded as one of the most extravagantly gifted architects of his generation, Mr. Israel died at an age when most architects are just beginning to build. Yet he had already accumulated a body of work sufficiently impressive to be the subject of several books and of a retrospective exhibition, held earlier this year at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. The retrospective confirmed Mr. Israel’s reputation as an architect who, while strongly influenced by pioneer modernists like Rudolf Schindler, Richard Neutra and Frank Lloyd Wright, nonetheless managed to develop his own highly distinctive voice.

He delighted in the aura of Hollywood, and several of his most distinguished residential projects were for people in the entertainment business, including the director Robert Altman, the actor Joel Grey and the agent Howard Goldberg, who, with life partner Jim Bean, commissioned a Hollywood Hills house in 1991 (rf “The Goldberg-Bean House”).

Mr. Israel was a passionate city lover. In a book about his work, published by Rizzoli in 1992, he wrote about the impact of three cities on his architecture: New York, Rome and Los Angeles. Seeking to bridge the gap in scale between individual buildings and the urban context, he spoke of designing “cities within,” interior spaces with the variety, color and surprise of a major metropolis. In his film production offices, Mr. Israel conceived of corridors as urban streets, leading to unexpected visual experiences. His use of fragmented forms echoed the fractured texture of the Los Angeles cityscape. Increasingly, as with the Dan House in Malibu, Mr. Israel looked for inspiration to the shifting, unstable landscape of Southern California.

Israel died from complications of AIDS, according to his companion, Thomas Haase.