Phil Gyford

I read it in 1991,stayed with me, often mean to reread it. I always think of it in the context of polishing things. I used to spend hours polishing my bicycle as a child, I was really proud of it. I wash the car every six months now so that hasn't stayed with me, the bike is permanently dirty. The British Army have always had this thing linking morale to a pair of sparkling polished boots. Remember the Karate Kid 1 and the car polishing? Doesn't strike a chord with everyone though.

I'm with Phil. I borrowed it from the college library and carried it around for a few weeks and never got into it, and just ended up feeling stupid. It didn't even impress the chicks either.

And what use is THAT!?

Remember Michael J Pollard in the Steve Martin Movie Roxanne? He carried around Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" with much the same aim - to impress a woman. Didn't work for him either.

It is rough going at first but worth the effort. It took me almost a year to read because I did not want it to end. The chapter on the nest, its delicacy, its fragile nature and the monumental painful effort of the bird to build it is wonderful. You guys should try again.

Yeah, but I did read it all the way through, and very little grabbed me. It was a chore rather than a pleasure unfortunately!

hey everyone
i am a design student at an art school in germany...
i'm supossed to make a review of the book
and talk about it.
i am having a hard time reading...i kinda get the point but it is way hard. just don't like... i thought it would be very interesting but when i started reading it turned out to be not what i expected.
my question is, does anyone here has some kind of review or something what explains the books context better...
thanx tobi

I just lent my copy of Poetics of Space to a guy here at the office. I mentioned to him that a better book on the subject is Body, Memory and Architecture by Charles Moore. Also another great book is Experiencing Architecture by Rasmussen. Aslo Placeways by E.V. Walters. These three later books are a great read. Poetics of Space is too far on the side of poetics that mention architectural experiences.

some practical poetics here:

www.citypoems.co.uk

Uhhh I think you are all are missing souls. It is exactly in the qoutidian things such as drawers and boxes that our lives are contained. This was a powerful book filled with insight. I am so tired of many of our generation whose heads are filled with shit and self importance, that they can't comprehend the value of this work.

Way to go with the considered criticism of why this book might not appeal to some people Caleibow. "Shit and self importance"?

This is the book that so many artists read, and are influenced by, in their associations of the domestic and so on, but it is not the book that it should be. I'd like to write another based around its skeleton, only this time with pictures of some of the art work that has been created as a result of it. When you open it up it is dense and difficult, but when you let yourself wander into it you come up with all these images. What would be great is if everybody pooled their images and made a new book.

What you're missing is fundamental to Bachelard's archaeology of the "deep structures" (to borrow a term from linguistics) of subjective experience (i.e. the Phenomenological approach). Bachelard intends a lyrical "topoanalysis" of the spaces which we inhabit subjectively, at the level of reverie, daydream, submerged memory and sub-conscious association (all part of what some phenomenlogists call "lived experience"). Perhaps you expected to find an elucidation of the relationship of architecture to the individual. This is not Bachelard's intended project. In gross oversimplification, Bachelard is interested in exploring how we subjectively experience "intimate" spaces as we daydream within them. That is why this book appeals to artists and philosophers and other creative, sensitive or "dreamy" souls who can access the wonder and open-mindedness they had as a child more than it appeals to trained logicians, scientists or, presumably, many a working architect. Incidentally, I personally feel that, for his intended purpose, the writing is exquisite.

A "poetics" normally gives an account of poetry and its aesthetic devices and theoretical underpinnings; what is a "poetics of space" then, if not an exploration of the lyrical engagement with our surroundings? Where else would one look to find such a thing other than in poetry and other artistic works?

Part of the basic disconnect may be that Bachelard (and often poetry in general) de-emphasizes sight (privileged by Enlightenment thinking as the primary organ of perception), which architecture very much depends upon. For Bachelard and other phenomenologists, cognition is multi-dimensional and ambiguous; Bachelard (like Heidegger before him) turns to the literary image as a mirror of subconscious, associative expression of the kind of subjectivity normally accessible only in dreams. The following is copied from an excellent Harvard Design Magazine article (www.gsd.harvard.edu/re…), and it captures what I'm trying to say far better than I could:

"Despite its perceptual sophistication, the eye cannot necessarily go beyond a description of surface: “Sight says too many things at the same time. Being does not see itself. Perhaps it listens to itself.”(12). Space, for Bachelard, is not primarily a container of three-dimensional objects. For this reason the phenomenology of dwelling has little to do with an analysis of “architecture” or design as such: “it is not a question of describing houses, or enumerating their picturesque features and analyzing for which reasons they are comfortable.”(13) Rather, space is the abode of human consciousness, and the problem for the phenomenologist is to study how it accommodates consciousness—or the half-dreaming consciousness Bachelard calls reverie.... Bachelard would undoubtedly argue that almost everything we know about architecture as a historical discipline stands in the way of everything we can know about the poetics of dwelling."

I hope this is vaguely helpful.

to chris 19 july 2006 your writing has given me a clearer understanding of the concept so I cannot wait 2 possess a copy and absorb thanks

I have read this book before - about four years ago, it was also recommended to me by a tutor at art college. Initailly I found it very dense and confusing, but also very addictive, it is a palletable form of philosophy which if you let it will open doors to you. I understand that what he is doing is writing in a poetical, philosohical stream of consiousness, that's probably not the correct phrase, but if you approach the book understanding that a lot will go over your head and probably not all of it will be of interest, you may be slightly more open to it, and understanding.
I'm reading it because it does relate to architecture - and as chris mentions, not strictly to the structure, more the experiencing of space and "phenomenology" the importance words have on our understanding of our situation and the criteria by which we judge and make informed decisions.
It should be a book that you never lend out.

Chris: thanks for the link

I'm a philosophy student, trained in logic, discourse and all those other wonderful tools that philosophers use to expound the simplest truths with dizzying complexity. I have to do a report on this book for a course and I'm beginning to think I shan't be done in time.

In any case, it may be my logic training, but I have a very difficult time grasping this book. Even with a grasp of phenomenology I find this book to be almost incomprehensible. I get the point that Bachelard makes about spaces affecting our immaterial beings. This point is easy to accept if we consider that man is not solely a material being but also a spiritual one. It then follows that man's habitats have not only physical but also metaphysical affects on him. Now as to weather the space itself has these properties or they are simply in the perception of the inhabitant is another question entirely. There are arguments for both sides.

The best way that I can think of to understand this metaphysical affect is to think of that sense of familiarity we get with some places, even if we don't remember being there before. A house that resembles the ones we grew up in for instance. It lingers as an intangible sense that this is a familiar space. This can be attributed to this metaphysical affect that our spaces have on us. The same can be said for spaces like cupboards and draws and attics and cellars and so on. In fact many children's stories use these places as settings for happy things, or sad things, or scary things, or to give a sense of adventure etc. etc. There is something about these places, or at least our perception of them, that seems to carry a metaphysical weight to them.

Now that's about as deep as my logician mind got into this book. Much thanks to Chris for a few clarifying ideas (which I have not yet applied) and the link. If anybody would care to elaborate further on the book or its application of phenomenology I'm sure it would prove helpful and so I am grateful in anticipation.

hi guys,
I'm searching for this book on e book format! does anyone have it?
I'll be thankful though..

sounds interesting, i think i'll read it... thanks all for sharing your insights!

I am a bit late to this discussion but am currently writing a paper on Norberg-Shulz who uses the same references to "phenomenology" as Bachelard and applies it more toward architecture and place rather than space. A major philosophical reference underlying both writers is the work of Martin Heidegger.