Los Angeles architect Randall Stout was a former associate of Frank Gehry and started his own firm in 1997. (Randall Stout Architects)

Nature gave Los Angeles architect Randall Stout a vision. Its destruction gave him a calling.

Known for buildings that curved and swooped, drawing comparisons to birds and water, Stout sought to make each of his designs "respond to its place," he once told an interviewer. He championed green buildings and green energy before they were household words.

His impulses grew from his Tennessee childhood in the Great Smoky Mountains. He loved the Smokies' soaring canopies of hemlocks and ancient, soft contours — so different from the bold, jagged ranges out West, he would say.

But those childhood idylls also made him witness to the Smokies' defilement by industrial mining and acid rain.

"He saw first-hand a lot of environmental damage done before the Clean Air and Clean Water acts," said his brother, Steve Stout. It sealed Stout's commitment to environmental stewardship from his earliest days as an architect.

The 56-year-old architect died July 11 in Los Angeles of renal cell carcinoma, his brother said....Continue Reading

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