Rüttiweg 15

Duldeck House, which today houses the Rudolf Steiner Archive, was built as a residence for the founder of the Goetheanum property. Rudolf Steiner attached great importance to its construction as a “lively protest against everything traditional in architectural style and construction […] as a proclamation of something new”. And this wish still applies today, despite the great developments in building technology and construction forms. The forms of the house are still fascinatingly different in their movement and details than much of what was built elsewhere. And if one imagines oneself back in 1915 on the Dornach hill, haus Duldeck is quite a radical step from the Goetheanum and the Glashaus, even if the two oriels at the corners can still be read as a reminiscence of the two domes on the Heizhaus or Glashaus. With the shape of the roof, the movement of the gutters and the band of storeys, as well as the north entrance, Rudolf Steiner now fully embarked on the modelling path that he had presumably begun with the chimney of the Heizhaus: the exploitation of the new building material reinforced concrete, the exploration of the formal possibilities of metamorphosis and the inclusion of gesture in the design of buildings.

However, there was also resistance to the project. Not because of the forms, but because of the profane use as a residential building in the immediate vicinity of the Mystery Site. Rudolf Steiner countered this with his clear opinion that, as in the Middle Ages, there should be life around the Goetheanum building and that he would have no objection to diapers fluttering in the wind on the hill. And so the house on the hill was tolerated and named Duldeck.

Pictures: © Jolanthe Kugler | Picture right center © Norbert Roztocki