Introduction

The introduction to this volume examines how writing about architectural spaces can be a way of reflecting on intangible processes of the mind, such as memory and imagination. The editors contextualise these ideas in relation to the influential, post-Heideggerian, phenomenological tradition that is most notably exemplified in the work of Gaston Bachelard. They discuss the long reverberations in literature of classical and medieval ideas which link built space with the function and structure of the mind, illustrating these ideas through an extended discussion of the essay by Andrew Lanyon which forms the first chapter of the book. The introduction provides an imaginative and original approach to space and the mind, identifying architecture and cognition as the through line that links the book’s chapters.