Randall Stout designed several regional museums, including the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton, shown in 2009.CreditRyan Jackson/Edmonton Journal

Randall Stout, an environmentally sensitive architect who earned a national reputation for designing dynamically shaped regional museums, mostly in his native South, died on Friday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 56.

The cause was renal cell cancer, said his brother, Steven.

Mr. Stout, an associate in Frank Gehry’s office before establishing his own firm in 1996 in Los Angeles, explored the relationship between architecture and energy in holistic designs that were no less sculptural and humane for being ecologically responsible. Sustainability helped shape form.

He started his firm with a series of internationally admired commissions for energy plants, fire stations and sports centers in Germany. The structures — turbulent forms and canyonesque spaces, with sculptural solids juxtaposed against light-filled voids — were often built on tight budgets using inexpensive, energy-smart materials.

In the United States he specialized in cultural projects, especially midsize museums. His portfolio includes the clifflike Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tenn., perched on a bluff along the Tennessee River; the glacierlike Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Va.; and the strikingly cantilevered Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts in Birmingham, Ala....Continue Reading

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