Anthroposophy and Rudolf Steiner

[Scott Vincent]

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/3987/anthro.html

Trying to find out if Roger Dean had any 'connection' . Steiner's architecture and the "organic" movement, and Roger Dean continue to fascinate and inspire me.
SV

[Scott Vincent]

Architecture
With his architectural impulse, Steiner sought to spiritualise and vitalise architecture. One of the ideas of Anthroposophical architecture is that the buildings should appear in harmony with the landscape into which they are built in, both with regards to form and material. Their form should reflect their function, and at the same time, they should be both practical and artistic. Steiner wanted the architecture to express the living processes of the etheric realm, where the archetypes exist which mould the physical forms. For instance, the human body is built on the basis of the etheric body, which is the form after which the child is built in the womb of the mother - similar to the way we human beings create a house by first visualising it mentally and then drawing it, before it is manifested in the physical. Human creating reflect the cosmic creative processes.
Steiner worked a lot with metamorphosis and the changes of forms within nature. There is always a metamorphosis going on in nature - between the different seasons, as plant grows or an animal or human being grows, and this physical reality reflects the unseen life forces that are at work. Steiner sought to make them visible to people who did not possess the same psychic abilities as he did, and one way he could illustrate them was in his sculpturing and architecture. Seen from an Anthroposophical viewpoint (and for that matter with the eyes of spiritual science as such), all physical forms are reflections of forces which operate on higher levels - firstly the etheric, or "form-force field" as Steiner sometimes called it, and secondary the higher spiritual worlds where the creative hierarchies exist and work with the creative processes of the universe. Materialism, or the idea that physical matter and energy is all there is, and there are no vital or intelligent spiritual forces behind physical creation, was one of the ideas which Steiner sought to counteract, because he knew it is deadening to the human soul. One way to do this was to open people's eyes to the beauty and life of the spiritual worlds through art and architecture. Steiner's whole world view was an organic one, where the world and is seen as a vast living, spiritual entity. The different physical forms - galaxies, stars, planets, landscapes, animals, plants etc. are created and influenced by different spiritual beings of many grades, orders and characters. The ancient creation myths of this planet all reflect this, as Steiner pointed out, and his architectural impulse was and is an attempt to do in architecture what Anthroposophy always seeks: To bring man and his culture into harmony and alignment with cosmos and its living, spiritual forces.

[Scott Vincent]

Is Mr Dean still designing residentially?
Note to self...try contacting Mr Dean!
Happy Birthday Frank Lloyd Wright!

[Scott Vincent]

Willow Water and the Goetheanum are two of my favorite structures.
http://www.goetheanum.org/