Gaston Bachelard’s La poétique de l’espace (1958) / The Poetics of Space (1964, 1994, translated by Maria Jolas). Here’s a book that probably cannot be fully absorbed but rather acts as a touchstone into other ways of perceiving. For me, it’s a textual equivalent corresponding to the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St (1972), Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti (1975) and John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme (1964-1965). Perpetually mindblowing and otherworldly, yet grounded in this world.
Bachelard roams through architecture small and large via the scrim of poetry, fiction, daydreams, memories, dreams, light, shadow, color, sound and touch, scent and imagination. Our abode, if we are lucky enough to dwell in one, “shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.” “Imagination augments the values of reality.”
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