Rudolf Steiner

Architecture as a Total Work of Art Rudolf Steiner

Heinrich Ferstel said that architectural styles are not invented, but born out of the spiritual life of an entire age. Steiner agrees wholeheartedly with this statement, but then asks: Why does his age only recapitulate old styles? Why is it impotent to create a new style? The Goetheanum was meant to be a new impulse out of the clarity of anthroposophical striving. Like the Mystery Dramas, this new architectural impulse will contribute simultaneously to social renewal. The Goetheanum was meant to be real art, not abstraction. It was not meant to capture the ideas of anthroposophy in symbolic form, but rather to be another branch growing from the same root as anthroposophy. The head and the body need to be sculpted very differently. Color nuances should supersede line; we need to create out of color itself. Form should be the work of color. In the Goetheanum, two spaces represent human striving and the answer to that striving. The infinite sphere arrives as a new architectural form. Sculpting in wood is very different from sculpting in stone: in the former we need to carve out concavities, while in the latter we need to build up convexities. Evolution does not yield ever greater complexity; instead, it runs from the simple to the complex and then back to simplicity again. Everything in the building is organic. The old dynamic-mechanical principle of architecture gives way to Goethean metamorphosis.