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| Species of Spaces | |
|---|---|
| Name | Species of Spaces |
| Author | Georges Perec |
| Title orig | Espèces d'espaces |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Genre | Essay |
| Publisher | Éditions Denoël |
| Pub date | 1974 |
| Pages | 128 |
Species of Spaces
Species of Spaces is a short book by Georges Perec first published in 1974 that explores everyday environments through a taxonomy of rooms, objects, and architectures. Combining memoir, formal constraint, and descriptive cataloguing, it bridges experimental writing associated with Oulipo, avant-garde practices linked to Surrealism, and spatial theory engaged by thinkers like Michel Foucault and Henri Lefebvre. The work has been influential across literature, architecture, urbanism, and design debates in institutions such as The Architectural Association and universities including Université Paris VIII.
Perec wrote Species of Spaces after earlier projects such as La Disparition and in the context of Oulipo gatherings alongside figures like Raymond Queneau and Italo Calvino, reflecting interests in combinatorics and constraint-based composition. The book situates personal recollection within registers used by Marcel Proust and Georges Bataille, while echoing methodological concerns found in Roland Barthes and Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space debates. Perec frames ordinary settings—rooms, towns, journeys—through lists and vignettes, resonating with practices at Centre Pompidou exhibitions and pedagogies at École des Beaux-Arts.
The text is organized into short sections that function like catalog entries, resembling inventories used in archives at institutions such as the Bibliothèque nationale de France and methods taught at Columbia University architecture programs. Perec shifts between first-person narrative and quasi-scientific description, invoking cartographic genres exemplified by Paul Virilio and typologies akin to work by Aldo Rossi and Le Corbusier. The format manipulates scale—microscopic object lists, apartment inventories, city sketches—to create a nested topology comparable to museum displays at the Musée d'Orsay.
Key themes include memory and absence, echoing motifs in Perec's other works like W, or the Memory of Childhood, and the interplay of domesticity and public space discussed by Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau. The book interrogates how ordinary artifacts—furniture, staircases, windows—structure experience, connecting to debates in Modernism and practices in Interior design and Landscape architecture. Perec also engages with chronology and habit, themes familiar from Samuel Beckett's minimalism and Virginia Woolf's stream-of-consciousness, while raising questions about classification methods used by Paul Otlet and Gottfried Semper.
Originally published in French by Éditions Denoël in 1974, the work later appeared in English translations by publishers such as Harper & Row and specialty presses connected to the Calder and Boyars. Subsequent editions included critical introductions by scholars affiliated with Université de Paris, annotations used in curricula at The Courtauld Institute of Art, and reprints by independent houses that parallel archival projects at Bibliothèque nationale de France. Special illustrated editions collaborated with designers from studios like Pentagram and curators affiliated with Tate Modern.
Critics in publications such as Le Monde and The New York Times praised Perec's capacity to transform mundane detail into literary inquiry, while academic reception engaged disciplines at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University College London. The book influenced architects including Rem Koolhaas and urbanists connected to Jane Jacobs-inspired debates, being cited in courses at MIT School of Architecture and Planning and exhibitions at MoMA. Cultural theorists at Goldsmiths, University of London and historians working with archives at the Institut d'histoire du temps présent have traced its impact on practices of collecting and curating.
Some critics argued that Perec's focus on minutiae risks aestheticizing banality, a debate mirrored in controversies around Postmodernism and institutional critiques leveled at museums like Centre Georges Pompidou. Debates emerged over translations rendered by publishers such as Grove Press and Penguin Books, with translators and critics at The Times Literary Supplement disputing fidelity to Perec's formal play. Certain scholars pointed to elitism in the book's stylistic games, aligning critiques with broader disagreements involving figures like Jean-Paul Sartre and debates within French theory.
Translated widely into languages including English, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, and Portuguese, editions circulated through channels connected to Faber & Faber, Editorial Anagrama, and Suhrkamp Verlag, reaching readers at cultural centers like The Louvre and universities such as University of São Paulo. The work spurred exhibitions, teaching modules, and projects in cities from Paris to São Paulo and Tokyo, influencing practitioners across design studios tied to Dezeen and academic networks at Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Category:1974 books Category:French literature Category:Georges Perec