Written by Jan Vermulen
The First Goetheanum
Rudolf Steiner’s Architectural Impulse
I became aware that architecture can reveal the state of human consciousness when I went scouting for a location for a film I was working on a few years ago. We were looking for a traditional Venda compound in Limpopo to shoot parts of the film. We found a beautiful village, still intact with several rondawels, shared sleeping quarters and a communal cooking space with built-in seating that extended from the mud-brick walls in a pristine and practical court yard. Everything neatly designed in circles and curves. Not a straight wall in sight.
But the owner couldn’t wait to move into one of those match-box RDP houses.
“Why?” I asked.
For running water, electricity, an inside toilet and because, she told me, her prized kitchen unit doesn’t fit against a round wall. Then, there is the question of privacy, a need for private bedrooms with doors and separating children from the adults.
Isn’t this a clear example of folk soul morphing into consciousness soul? A move from collectivism to individualism? But what a pity that the RDP matchbox type housing is the best we could come up with to replace traditional homes.
More than a hundred years ago (1904), Rudolf Steiner saw architecture as an expression of spirit in the material world when he designed the First Goetheanum; the building that would become the Head Quarters of the Anthroposophical Society in Basel, Switzerland. Instead of using a drawing board, he moulded a proto-type model out of clay with his hands.
Architecture should be an Art Form and Spiritual Science he claimed. It demands an environment that differs from the ones which the dying culture of the day had to offer. The entire structure, 66 000 cubic metres, (the size of 18 Olympic sized swimming pools) could accommodate 900 people and was constructed almost entirely out of timber on a concrete base.
Rudolf Steiner introduced the principal of metamorphosis in the construction of the interior architraves, the columns and the capitals. All Architecture, he explained, consists of projecting into space the same spiritual laws that construct the human body.
From all over the world, artisans and lay people flocked to help him realise his vision. He taught them how to chisel the massive interior columns and cover the two-domed roof. It was to be a space where the world of senses meets and penetrates the world of spirit. Peace and harmony will flow into the hearts of men through these forms, he said. Buildings will begin to speak.
I now look at those traditional Venda compounds and RDP houses in Limpopo with new eyes.
The First Goetheanum was almost complete when it was destroyed in a fire on New Year’s Eve in 1922/23. A year later, Steiner started working on the model for the second Goetheanum that still stands today.
A very rare and precious model of the First Goetheanum is now on display in the library of the Rudolf Steiner Centre in Johannesburg. It is true marvel.
You can view the model during library open times, and also browse the book “The Goetheanum : Rudolf Steiner’s architectural impulse“.
