The American Idea of Home: Conversations About Architecture and Design by Bernard Friedman
University of Texas Press, 2017
Hardcover, 228 pages

In 2012 Bernard Friedman put out American Homes, billed as "1800 years of American residential architecture in 11 minutes." Started in 2006, the short film owed much to the work of Lester Walker, particularly his book American Homes: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Domestic Architecture, as well as a bevy of architects that he interviewed "to give the audience a glimpse into the many decisions that go into designing a home," per the introduction to his new book on the subject. I was not familiar with the documentary (its trailer is below), but the interview transcripts assembled in The American Idea of Home make clear that Friedman's film had to leave out much of what he learned from Walker, Richard Meier, Kenneth Frampton, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Tracy Kidder, Paul Goldberger, Thom Mayne, and other familiar names in architecture, residential and otherwise.
The new book includes thirty of Friedman's interviews in five sections: the Functions and Meanings of Home; History, Tradition, Change; Activism, Sustainability, Environment; Cities, Suburbs, Region; and Technology, Innovation, Materials. Like any book that goes this route, there is plenty of overlap in these sections, be it in the themes, the voices fitted into this or that section, or their responses to Friedman's questions. As an e...