How a French philosopher may have inspired the Tiny House Movement
I picked up a book I had kept since my art school days—The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard (1964). This was the first English translation of the book, and I remember keeping it in my art studio, even though it was in grave danger of being covered in plaster. The book survived a flood as well, and now bears the watermarks of an elderly book, well worn, with rippled pages and cover. The Poetics of Space has always been important to me, as each time I pick it up and read from any part of the book, I find the reason why I have done that very thing.
The French philosopher wrote about three very abstruse concepts—phenomenology, epistemology and topoanalysis (a derivation of topophilia—the love of space). For philosophers, The Poetics of Space is a feast of big words. For artists, like me, the book opened a door into a combination of deep, dense analysis of spaces in relationship to their humans and the poet’s version of what the philosopher may see. In other words, my world was different and I was fascinated by a philosophy professor’s glimpse into it.
My recent look into my companion book took me to the chapter on “miniature”. Without the benefit of so many movie tributes to the miniature (“Fantastic Voyage”, etc.), Bachelard (who passed away in 1962) gave examples of children’s books, where tiny doors opened into tiny houses, with vast interiors and countless rooms. Such fantasies, according to Bachelard, are not limited to children. “In point of fact, imagination in miniature is natural imagination which appears at all ages in the daydreams of born dreamers.”
A Born Dreamer is the name I would be proud to bear. Decades later, some Born Dreamers created one, then two, then a few, then many tiny houses. The tiny house movement is more than a passing trend, a hobby to be enjoyed for a time in the back yard, then left to deteriorate. It has become, like the Surrealist Movement, a philosophy that a person can enjoy more life with less house. One of the parallels I found with Bachelard is that there is a sense of awe Bachelard attempted to demonstrate, when he described the human protagonist in a French children’s book, Bean Treasure by Charles Nodier, who finds himself in the house of the Beggar Fairy, hidden under a tuft of grass, where he is astonished to see the vast number of rooms, and settles down in comfort. People in awe of tiny houses anticipate something different, until they open the door and are astonished by the beautiful space, with no thought to its size.
Bachelard knew cottages and huts, and was unhappy with the post-WWII building boom, with its housing projects, huge apartment buildings and concrete construction. Even though he lived in and taught philosophy in Paris, his first imprint was the village house he lived in early in his life. In a way, he was ahead of his time in his vision of the importance of the miniature to the born dreamer’s imagination. The Tiny House Movement still idolizes beautifully crafted little huts—as did Bachelard—and I believe Bachelard touched on a deep sensitivity in the human imagination to seek out tiny universes. But now, in this time, "miniature" can also include an apartment in Manhattan. Bachelard would be so amused.
Carla McBeath (copyright 2020)
