Rudolf  Steiner’s architecture is, like everything else that he expressed in his lifetime, a direct expression of his own experience of realms outside ordinary sensory experience. His architectural work especially emphasised the dynamic formative forces which underlie and give rise to the kingdoms of nature and of man himself. Truly gifted artists instinctively draw on the same source for the designs of their paintings, their music, sculpture, etc. but few would say that they are mirroring in their works the creative archetypal beings and relationships which exist in these unseen realms.

What many do instinctively, Steiner was able to do consciously, with direct perception of these realms. He was able to design his structures, primarily the first and second Goetheanum, with a direct grasp of how the spiritual was to come to expression in these works and in the activities which were to take place in them.

His emphasis in his work was not simply to create atmosphere which is conducive to this or that human experience, but to actively draw into shape and space, the activities of the higher worlds. This, he maintains, was achieved in ages past, such as in the design of Greek temples. As foreign as this concept is to the habits of modern thought, these temples became the abode of actual Beings of a stature beyond the human. An echo of this still lived on in medieval cathedrals.

Similarly, but in a way consistent with current humanity, Steiner’s efforts were to create structures which bring the spiritual actually into the structures where human activities are to take place. The purely aesthetic experience of these structures is itself an expression of this process, not simply a pleasing aspect of the design consideration.

In this collection of lectures, which span the years from 1905 to 1924, Steiner covers many aspects of this approach to a higher architecture. He describes how architecture developed out of the Mysteries of the distant past, its influence on the human being, its importance as an expression of the divine in human culture, reflections of life forces in architecture through metamorphosis of form, and much else.

1. The Origins and Nature of Architecture
2. The Formative Influence of Architecture on the Human Being
3. The History of Architecture in the Light of Mankind’s Spiritual Evolution
4. A New Architecture as a Means of Uniting with Spiritual Forces
5. Art and Architecture as Manifestations of Spiritual Realities
6. Metamorphosis in Architecture
7. Aspects of a New Architecture
8. Rudolf Steiner on the First Goetheanum Building
9. The Second Goetheanum Building
10. The Architecture of a Community in Dornach

1. The Temple is the Human Being
2. The Restoration of the Lost Temple

See also: Architecture as a Synthesis of the Arts