The Poetics of Space
.jpg) Cover of the French edition | |
| Author | Gaston Bachelard |
|---|---|
| Original title | La Poétique de l'Espace |
| Translator | Maria Jolas |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Subject | Architecture |
| Publisher | Presses Universitaires de France |
Publication date | 1958 |
Published in English | 1969 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 241 |
| ISBN | 0-8070-6439-4 (English edition) |
The Poetics of Space (French: La Poétique de l'Espace) is a 1958 book by Gaston Bachelard. Bachelard applies the method of phenomenology to architecture basing his analysis not on purported origins (as was the trend in enlightenment thinking about architecture) but on lived experience of architecture. He focuses especially on the personal, emotional response to buildings both in life and in literary works, both in prose and in poetry. He is thus led to consider spatial types such as the attic, the cellar, drawers and the like. Bachelard implicitly urges architects to base their work on the experiences it will engender rather than on abstract rationales that may or may not affect viewers and users of architecture.
Sometimes the house of the future is better built, lighter and larger than all the houses of the past, so that the image of the dream house is opposed to that of the childhood home…. Maybe it is a good thing for us to keep a few dreams of a house that we shall live in later, always later, so much later, in fact, that we shall not have time to achieve it. For a house that was final, one that stood in symmetrical relation to the house we were born in, would lead to thoughts—serious, sad thoughts—and not to dreams. It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.— Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
Chapter 2: House and Universe: section VIII
Reception
Camille Paglia has listed The Poetics of Space as an influence on her 1990 work of literary criticism Sexual Personae.[1]