Goetheanum

The Goetheanum, located in Dornach (near Basel), Switzerland, is the world center for the anthroposophical movement. The building was designed by Rudolf Steiner and named after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It includes two performance halls (1500 seats), gallery and lecture spaces, a library, a bookstore, and administrative spaces for the Anthroposophical Society; neighboring buildings house the Society's research and educational facilities. Conferences focusing on themes of general interest or directed toward teachers, farmers, doctors, therapists, and other professionals are held at the center throughout the year.

Both the present Goetheanum building and its precursor have been widely cited as masterpieces of modern architecture.

The Goetheanum is open for visitors seven days a week and offers tours several times daily.

The First Goetheanum, a timber and concrete structure designed by Rudolf Steiner, was one of seventeen buildings Steiner designed and supervised between 1908 and 1925. It was intended as a Gesamtkunstwerk (the synthesis of diverse artistic media and sensory effects), infused with spiritual significance. Begun in 1913 to house the annual summer theater events of the Anthroposophical Society, it rapidly became the center of a small colony of spiritual seekers located in Dornach and based around Steiner. Numerous visual artists contributed to the building: architects created the unusual double-dome wooden structure over a curving concrete base, stained glass windows added color into the space, painters decorated the ceiling with motifs depicting the whole of human evolution, and sculptors carved huge column bases, capitals, and architraves with images of metamorphoses.

Already during the construction, musicians, actors and movement artists began performing a wide variety of pieces in a neighboring workshop. When the Goetheanum hall was completed, in 1919, these performances moved onto the stage located under the Goetheanum's smaller cupola. The auditorium was located under the larger cupola.

This building was destroyed by arson on New Year's Eve, December 31, 1922 – January 1, 1923.

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