Goetheanum
Interesting facts
- Steiner first planned the building for Munich as the Johannesbau, named after a character in his mystery dramas, but the city refused permission in 1913.
- The Dornach site was offered by the Swiss dentist Emil Grosheintz, who met Steiner at a lecture in Basel in 1912.
- At its peak around 600 people worked on the first building, drawn from 17 countries, some of which were fighting each other in the First World War.
- The name Goetheanum replaced Johannesbau only in 1918, honouring Goethe's writings on metamorphosis and colour that shaped Steiner's thinking.
- The roof of the first Goetheanum was clad in blue-green Norwegian slate quarried near Voss.
- The burned building had been insured for 3,183,000 Swiss francs; suspicion fell on a watchmaker from Arlesheim, but arson was never proven.
- The concrete successor measures about 90 by 85 metres and rises 37 metres, enclosing around 110,000 cubic metres of space.
- Building it took roughly 15,000 cubic metres of concrete and about 990 tonnes of reinforcing steel.
- In 1938 the Goetheanum mounted the first complete staging of both parts of Goethe's Faust, a production spread over several days.
- A separate glass house from 1914 served as the workshop where the coloured windows were cut using a technique Steiner developed himself.
Why it is worth it
On a hillside above the village of Dornach, south of Basel, stands a building that seems to have been modelled rather than built. The Goetheanum is a massive structure of exposed concrete with almost no right angles: its walls swell and fold, its roof curves down like a heavy cloak, and its windows sit in deep, sculpted recesses. It is the world centre of the anthroposophical movement and is named after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose scientific and artistic ideas its founder admired.
The designer was Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy, who drew some seventeen buildings between 1908 and 1925. The first Goetheanum, begun in 1913, was a very different object: a double-domed timber structure on a curving concrete base, conceived as a total work of art in which architecture, carved columns, painted ceilings and coloured glass were meant to act together. Boat builders were engaged to shape its rounded wooden forms. It was opened in 1920 and burned down on the night of 31 December 1922; whether the fire was arson has never been proven.
Steiner designed the replacement in 1923, this time entirely in cast concrete. Construction began in 1924 and was finished in 1928, after his death. The second Goetheanum was a pioneering use of visible concrete to achieve sculptural, organic shapes on an architectural scale, and it is now protected as a Swiss national monument and counted among the major works of twentieth-century expressionist architecture. Inside are a large auditorium used for theatre and eurythmy, stained-glass windows dating from Steiner's time, and a nine-metre wooden sculpture, The Representative of Humanity, carved by Steiner and Edith Maryon. Around the main building, several smaller structures by Steiner, including a boiler house with an unusual sculpted chimney, continue the same language. Architects including Henry van de Velde, Frank Lloyd Wright, Hans Scharoun and Frank Gehry have visited and admired it.
Getting there
The Goetheanum stands in Dornach in the canton of Solothurn, about 2.5 km from the neighbouring town of Reinach and close to Basel. The nearest airport is EuroAirport Basel–Mulhouse–Freiburg (BSL), about 15 km away. Dornach is served by local trains at Dornach-Arlesheim station on the Basel–Biel line and by Basel tram line 10.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Goetheanum, located in Dornach, in the canton of Solothurn, Switzerland, is the world center for the anthroposophical movement. The term refers to two structures, the first was in use 1919 to 1922 and destroyed by fire; the second was completed in 1928 and is in use since.
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