Leading modernist Bernard Judge passed away in his Los Angeles home last week at the age of 90.

The LA Times’ Carolina Miranda has an excellent write-up on the man who once designed a home for Marlon Brando on an atoll in French Polynesia.

Judge was in many ways the living definition of a “champion of modernism,” pioneering the geodesic dome form exhibited in his Triponent House and working to restore Rudolph Schindler’s then-eponymous West Hollywood home after taking out a personal ad in the Times in the early 1970s. 

Judge was born in New York City to an artist mother and architecture professor father. He went on to study at USC at a time when the school was dominated by prominent residential designers like Gregory Ain and Conrad Bluff III. 

Judge designed a number of resorts and inexpensive and easy-to-construct homes through his firm Environmental Services Group. He was a lecturer and environmental design teacher at UCLA, USC, SCI-Arc, and UC Berkeley in addition to serving on the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission and the state’s Art Commission panel for Art in Public Places.

“Man should not have to spend most of his working life paying for the roof over his head,” he told Dan MacMasters at the height of his prominence. 

Judge also served in the U.S. Navy and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He is survived by his wife Mallory and daughter Sabrina.