Why Do Architects Read Bachelard?

“Imagine waking up in the middle of the night; your body knows exactly how much space there is between the foot of the bed and what it needs to do. In a way, the space around you speaks to you and places you amidst subtly established rhythmic plays. This is an event experienced fully every day, where we absorb space through rhythms of movement, sound, and texture—resonating with what is around us. Space and time merge in the body. This deep bodily awareness is precisely the definition of settlement. Bachelard liberated us from understanding architecture based on Euclidean geometry and led us to the creative poetics of space.”

This book, aiming to traverse Gaston Bachelard’s admirable studies of space with various disciplines, brings its reader together with both Bachelard and his philosophical, literary, architectural, and design interpretations. Moving from the idea of "space" across different disciplines, it raises a question that should be asked not just for architecture but for every relevant discipline: "Why do architects read Bachelard?" This anthology, with its diversity of texts and visuals, seeks to find the rhythm of spaces. We believe we offer an adventure that readers interested in architecture, philosophy, and literature will thoroughly enjoy pursuing.