Comments on The poetics of Space

Gaston Bachelard's classic look at how we experience intimate places . The more I read this book the more it makes sense of my own work and the explanation for why the representation of nature within buildings is so poignant and important to us . If , as Bachelard suggests "the house is a nest for dreaming a shelter for imagining" then images of nature provide security and a space to dream . The need to daydream is not something so much explored in todays potentially frenetic lifestyle the space to dream can be limited by "our homogenized space ....suffused by television and video games , fluorescent lighting and plastic floors , air conditioning ssytems and too small closets" .
On the subject of trees.
"Poets (artists /designers )will help us to discover within ourselves such joy in looking that sometimes , in the presence of a perfectly familiar object , we experience and extension of our intimate space
"If you want to achieve the existence of a tree
Invest it with inner space
That has its being in you . Surround it with compulsions.
It knows no bounds , and only really becomes a tree
If it takes its place in the heart of your renunciation."
"A tall shuddering tree always moves the soul"
As Rilke wrote ...Silently the birds fly through us.O I who long to grow , I look outside myself and the tree inside me grows."
We can be so busy entertaining ourselves and filing time ans space that our inner space can be damaged and eroded. To create images or objects that draw the eye and lead to dreaming of past , future or fantasy creates more space and feeds the soul.
Bachelard G. 1958 (republished12994) The poetics of space Boston , Beacon Press.