The Poetics of Space By Gaston Bachelard

 Artwork by Chiara Zuanni

Captions of the images:

1. The house is a vertical being: “By dreaming we are in accord with the irrationality of the deep”.

“Verticality is ensured by the polarity of the cellar and the attic. The signs of such a polarity are so deep as to open, in some way, two very different directions for a phenomenology of the imagination. In fact it is possible to oppose, almost without comment, the rationality of the roof to the irrationality of the cellar. (…) Towards the roof all thoughts become clear" while the cellar is “the dark being of the house”. p. 45-46 p. 35

2. The house is a big cradle: “The being, in such a material paradise, seems to immerse itself in food, filled with all essential goods”.

“Before being "thrown into the world" as hasty metaphysics profess, man is laid in the cradle of the home. Life begins well, it begins enclosed, protected, warm in the womb of the house. Inside the being, in the being of the inside, a warmth envelops and welcomes the being. Being reigns in a sort of earthly paradise of matter, fused in the sweetness of an adequate matter”.

3. The house is our corner of the world: “Every truly inhabited space carries the essence of the notion of home”. “The home is our corner of the world, it is, as has often been repeated, our first universe. It is truly a cosmos, in the full meaning of the term. Is not the most modest house beautiful, if we look at it from the point of view of intimacy?” p. 33