My House Is Better Than Your House - by Nader Tehrani (Paperback)

About the Book

"My house" in title is taken from cover.

Book Synopsis

The house is commonly used as a vehicle to get at larger architectural debates. Such is the case in this book, with a dialogue between Nader Tehrani and Preston Scott Cohen whose collaboration in academia has often resulted in two very different approaches to pedagogy. In this discussion, Tehrani draws from central themes within Cohen's pedagogy to design a house as a response to the preoccupations that drive many of these debates. Adopting Villa Varoise as the main protagonist, the book draws on many architectures to situate the predicaments behind geometry, typology, and the architectural anomaly, among other things, as productive instruments for a broader cultural discussion on architecture.

Review Quotes

"Dubbed the "Dortoir Familial," or family dorm, when it won a P/A Award in 2013, the now-completed Villa Varoise in southern France provides flexible accommodations for extended family gatherings that range between five and 22 people. Nader Tehrani of Boston-based NADAAA--working with Paris-based associate architect Bidard & Raissi--designed the 5,300-square-foot house on a sloped site overlooking the Mediterranean." --ARCHITECT, The Journal of the American Institute of Architects

"The art of this book is that it can be enjoyed on several levels. It is a deep dive into the design process and the meticulous execution of one single house, and its surrounding landscape, taken from initial concept and site strategies through drawings, diagrams, models, and construction details.... But the book is also a manifesto--a reminder to all of us that as architects it is "our responsibility to change the status quo . . . to motivate the discipline, and produce not novelty, but innovation." If you manage that, then the results of the design process just may be "better."" --Architectural Record