The importance of architecture to clinical and psychiatric care is widely asserted. Foucault's writings have demonstrated how architecture has both mirrored and influenced conceptions of mental illness through history. However, this is different from considering space itself an intrinsic factor of the clinical process.

This paper will explore the relationship between the clinical and the spatial trough three instances. It will start at Saint-Alban’s hospital where Tosquelles and Bonnafé laid the ground of the French institutional psychotherapy movement. Here the concern with space first emerges as an economic and political issue. To avoid famine and extinction bars and windows were removed and the doors opened. This allowed establishing a support network with family and village farmers.

The paper then moves to Jean Oury and La Borde clinic. It will explore the theorization of'architectonic relations', 'atmosphere' and 'patoplasty' as the affirmation of space as a non-negligible therapeutic vector. Spatial protocols such the freedom to walk wherever patients wished and the rotation of spatial settings associated with medical functions will be analyzed at this light.

Finally, the paper will focus the work of Guattari. It will examine the link between affirming the importance of spatial factors in the production of an institutional collective (as seen in La Borde) with Guattari's interest in urbanism and his work at CERFI.
Ultimately, the paper aims to show the central importance of space to the clinical and argue how this relation ought to be considered as a question of a wider social and political relevance.