Otto Friedrich Bollnow (1903–91) gained a doctorate in physics with Max Born before studying philosophy with (especially) Georg Misch and Martin Heidegger, finishing his ‘Habilitation’ at Göttingen in 1931. He found it difficult to find a university teaching position, achieving this only in 1938. Then in the war years he was in the German army. In 1946 he began to teach at the University of Mainz, and in 1953 started as a professor of philosophy and pedagogy at the University of Tübingen, where he stayed for the rest of his life. As a writer he was prolific: his bibliography runs to 38 books and about 300 articles: almost none of which have been translated into English. Bollnow’s work can be placed within and between the fields of existentialism and phenomenology. His book of 1963, Human space, is situated there too. For more about him, see here.

Books by O.F. Bollnow

Human space

Human space is an English translation of one of the most comprehensive studies of space as we experience it. Since it was published in Germany in 1963, Bollnow’s text has become a key reading in architecture, anthropology, and philosophy. In 2004 the German edition was issued in its tenth impression. The book is serious academic research and something more – showing a great sensitivity to the near and the everyday. The text is enlivened and illustrated with many quotations, principally from German and English literature. Our edition is translated by Christine Shuttleworth and has an introduction by Joseph Kohlmaier, who places the work in its context of philosophical and architectural discussion.

Cover of Human space