Ashes of Modernism

The loss of iconic Modernist architecture following the devastating 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles.

This photography and film work documents the destruction of significant Modernist architecture following the 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles. In the Pacific Palisades and Altadena, houses by Richard Neutra, Gregory Ain, and others—once emblematic of California’s architectural modernity—were severely damaged or completely lost.

Modernist architecture in Los Angeles was shaped by ideas of openness, lightness, and a close relationship between building and landscape. Neutra’s residential works translated these principles into precise spatial systems of glass, steel, and horizontal planes. Gregory Ain’s Park Planned Homes in Altadena represented a social vision of affordable, well-designed housing rooted in egalitarian ideals. The Bridges House, a rare example of Brutalist architecture softened by wooden elements, stood at the intersection of expressive structure and material warmth.

The fires erased these buildings regardless of their cultural value. What remains are foundations, fragments, and traces—evidence of a built heritage exposed to forces for which it was never designed.

All photographs in this project were taken under overcast skies, deliberately avoiding dramatic light. The neutral, white sky removes visual distraction and emphasizes form, absence, and surface. This approach aligns the images with architectural documentation rather than spectacle, allowing the viewer to read destruction as fact rather than event.

Beyond individual losses, the fires raise broader questions about architecture in a changing climate. Increasing heat, prolonged drought, and intensified wind conditions have made large parts of Southern California structurally vulnerable. The destruction of Modernist houses is not an isolated cultural loss, but part of a wider environmental reality in which architectural ideals of the 20th century collide with the conditions of the 21st.

Ashes of Modernism is not a reconstruction of what was lost, but a visual record of a moment when architectural history, climate change, and cultural memory intersected.