The residence of writers Benedict (1919-2012) and Nancy Freedman (1920-2010) has gone up in smoke. Symbolic of the extraordinary corpus of architect-designed houses that shaped the myth of Los Angeles, it was designed in 1949 by Richard Neutra (1892-1970), an Austrian by birth whose name came to be one with that of his adopted city. He had the right style: light structure, sleek geometry, if not asceticism, gracefully articulating interior and exterior, setting its inhabitants in an idyllic relationship with the lush landscape of Pacific Palisades. On Tuesday, January 14, its name was added to the list of architectural heritage that Los Angeles must mourn.

Updated hourly by the Los Angeles Conservancy, this list already includes several dozen remarkable sites, houses and buildings. Bridges House (1989) – a fascinating structure suspended in the void overhanging a bend in Sunset Boulevard, supported by concrete piers that give it a brutalist appearance – is among the most spectacular in Pacific Palisades. Keeler House, designed by architect Ray Kappe (1927-2019) in 1991, with its large, tangled, cantilevered spaces, was also the kind of building that elicited "oh!" and "ah!" reactions of awe in the neighborhood.

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