The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard
- Publisher Beacon Press, Boston
- ISBN 9780807064733
- Year 1994 (First published in French 1958, English translation 1964)
- Tagged being-in-the-world, phenomenology, Sculpture, space
This was on the reading list of my Sculpture Masters course and strongly influenced me at a time when I was making the transition between working in 2d and 3d. The book was the trigger for an interest in the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger and these ideas have become hugely important to how I think about space and lived experience. Poetic and highly subjective (the chapters on The House are the most obviously culturally specific) it feels grounded in experience and is an easier read than many more drily academic philosophical works. Favourite chapters are ‘Shells’, ‘Intimate Immensity’ and ‘The Dialectics of Outside and Inside’. A continuing inspiration.
