Interior of the cloak room.

consistently throughout. The construction began in 1913 and was almost complete in 1922, the year of its destruction by arson.

The second Goetheanum is entirely of concrete and of far more angular form than the first. Steiner was expressing his solution to giving concrete a “suitable and genuinely artistic character.” He had used concrete only on the base of the first Goetheanum, and a nearby house. Everywhere the theme of the open pentagon is intimated in the exterior form of the building, but it is never actually expressed. The form of the western front, for example, comes from several metamorphoses of the pentagon.

The program was expanded from the previous program, so that the building would now house two stages for eurythmy and the Mystery Dramas, storage rooms for the scenery, space for the administration of the General Anthroposophical Society, studios, lecture rooms. The second Goetheanum has two levels instead of the one level of the first. The upper story is the large auditorium for performances, whereas the lower floor has smaller rooms for artistic and scientific work, as well as a rehearsal stage of the same dimensions as the main stage, with an ante-room for people to sit or wait. There is a circulation area which accesses the rooms on the lower level and has a raw concrete staircase leading upwards to the main auditorium.

The main entrance is on the west side and leads into an entrance vestibule leading to the cloak room and circulation area for the lower floor. Here it is faintly lit with daylight from above. Staircases on both sides lead to the auditorium above. On the way up, these stairs open onto a landing with views out of the [more...]