LIBRO

Human Space

di Otto Bollnow

Human Space is a study of space as we experience it, and how this experience is expressed in our culture and imagination. Showing a great sensitivity to the near and the everyday, it is a highly idiosyncratic but accessible phenomenology, often surprising and insightful, which draws in equal measure on anthropology, etymology, philosophy, poetry and fiction. Originally published in 1963, it is a seminal contribution to what is known today as the 'spatial turn' in late twentieth-century philosophy and the aesthetics and phenomenology of atmospheres. Of all Bollnow's books, Human Space has had the most lasting impact outside philosophy. Now in its eleventh printing, the German original continues to attract a diverse readership and has generated considerable interest in the domain of environmental psychology, architecture and urban design. A document of its time, it remains relevant today and opens a window on a wide range of early thinking in this field, including many sources that are still little known in the English-speaking world.