History through Architecture: History through Architecture

A special class of the Grade 12 Curriculum taught in Waldorf Schools around the world.

By Robert Black/Teacher

In this article, I look to architecture as living evidence of the growth of human consciousness. Are the pyramids more evolved than caves? Is a church more “spiritual” than a town hall? How does the architecture we create shape our lives and destinies as human beings? I use my experience as a teacher of a special Waldorf School class as a vehicle to explore the context and revelations in answering these questions.

As an architect, I have always been fascinated by the subject of human consciousness as it relates to the built environment, especially as the two have co-evolved throughout history. This fascination grew deeper as I became involved with improvisational movement – becoming aware of my own body in space and a consequent awareness of outer conditions around me that affected my inner feelings. This interest has prompted me to seek answers to questions about the deeper meaning of the phenomenon spirit in matter—the belief that our buildings and places carry hidden teachings which, once unveiled, help us better understand ourselves and our purpose as human beings here on Earth.

Twelve years ago, the serendipitous opportunity arose for me to create and teach a class at a local Waldorf School. The class, History through Architecture, is a culminating course, specifically designed into the Waldorf Education Grade 12 curriculum by Rudolf Steiner in the 1920’s... This opportunity provided the perfect venue to pursue the phenomenon of spirit-in-matter in greater detail.

The majority of students in the History through Architecture class are at a key phase of their development, as they are no longer children, but young adults standing at the threshold of the world. In the first semester of their senior year, the high school students begin to show signs of emerging maturity. As graduation approaches, their stand in the world begins to embody a deeper maturity, as they begin the process of leaving their parental home and seeking a new home of their own making in the world. They notice a world path unfolding before them – a path they must create by exercising their own free will and independent action. History through Architecture inspires this awareness and a worldview I propose to be critically important to human civilization today.

Impulses across Time

In my approach to teaching History through Architecture, I invite each student to explore how the inner life or spirit of human beings has evolved in cycles of history, rising up from situations of dire and depressing darkness. By presenting the historical backdrop of architecture through its respective milieus of culture, technology, and spirit, I hope to inspire the students to formulate a living continuum of history –a bridge between the evolutionary cycles of human history and the students themselves.

With the awakened awareness of their own significance within the living continuum, students are encouraged to resonate personally with particular aspects or events of history. They are asked to create written, drawn, or spoken responses to inner impulses that arise from their experiences of the material I present. Their unique expressions invariably begin to shape the classroom environment. Ideally, the students will remember the value to their own lives of this educational work as they leave home and high school and begin to make their own choices that will shape the environment of the larger world.

I present the idea in History through Architecture that the spirit of an age is embodied and reflected in its buildings - and that the buildings of any given era speak to us in a certain language – one composed of the aggregate thought of the enlightened beings of that age. These are the voices, not only of the builders and architects, but encoded in the forms and the very details are the voices of the poets, artists, writers, musicians, scientists, politicians, religious thinkers. I offer to students the idea that they may be the inspired ones of their age who go forth to shape the world, its edifices, even as those earlier inspired beings contributed to theirs.

Through daily Main Lessons over the course of the 4-week History through Architecture block, students are presented with a vibrant chronology of ideas and forces that have helped to shape the course of history. The Main Lessons interweave these historical landmarks with my view of their underlying principles. Collective contractions and expansions of the human spirit, or what I refer to as phases of darkness and light, is one such principle that tends to oscillate in waves across the timeline of history.

While describing one of these critical transitional eras in Western history—the 1840’s to 1860’s—students are introduced to individuals who played a pivotal role within this milieu-of-change by helping to shape a world consciousness. As the students copy into their workbooks a chalkboard timeline embellished with color and diagrams, they begin to comprehend the myriad and amazing interconnections between single lives and a larger matrix of interdependence shaping the course of history. The implication of nothing less than cosmic significance. They learn about the lives of Rudolf Steiner, Frank Lloyd Wright, Sigmund Freud, Karl Jung, Antonio Gaudi, Charles Rennie Macintosh, Paul Cezanne, Eduard Manet, Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Alexander Graham Bell, Marie Curie, Wilhelm Roentgen, Joseph John Thomson and many others who contributed to an expanding world knowledge in the fields of physics, architecture, technology, art, and human consciousness. These intermingling intelligences, cradled in the economic and political forces of the time, stirred the imaginations of architects and steered the skillful hands of builders to create new kinds of edifices. Many of these architectures live on today as testaments to aroused human potencies. No longer confined to churches or buildings of the State, as was the case many centuries ago, these modern day temples are now the grand structures of world exhibition halls, railroad stations, museums, mills, factories, office buildings, and densified housing in expanding urban centers.

Students in the History through Architecture class experience the manifestations of this “modern thinking” by studying the Eiffel Tower, the skyscraper, Usonian House, and Goetheanum. By reading, writing their impressions, sketching architectural forms, and engaging in lively class discussions, they begin to integrate multitudinous ideas into a more cohesive and understandable whole. To reinforce what is being taught in the classroom, I take the students on field trips into the local community where they can experience architecture created from its critical era as it took form then and as it continues to shape our present perceptions, ideas, and actions.

At the Rudolf Steiner School of Ann Arbor in Michigan, we go out into a historic downtown residential neighborhood and see the pattern of streets, rhythm of single-family houses, experience the community status of their residents, notice changes over time, and learn how the forms and placement of architecture still affects community attitudes today. I have also created a walk-through-time around the monumental and memorable central campus of the University of Michigan. Walking through the buildings, spaces and artwork, the students experience first hand the power of the human intellect and how the prestige of the gown (university) is reflected in the values of the town (municipality) across a century of time.

Similarly, the 12^th Graders at the Hartsbrook Waldorf School, in Hadley, Massachusetts, experience the mise-en-scene of Smith College in nearby Northampton and the flowing beauty of its campus as envisioned by landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, renowned for his timeless plans for Central Park in New York City and the Grounds of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. They walk the gently curving walks and take in the elegant trees holding the aggregation of buildings designed out of discrete cultural milieus since 1860, and the experience the living vision of education for women created by Sophia Smith. On a subsequent field trip, they travel to the industrial city of Holyoke, where water power (before the advent of electricity) prompted the forming of hand-dug canals, the construction of brick façade textile mills and created new wealth for the Skinner family and thousands of immigrants. This city’s architecture, from its mills to its tenements, from its mansions to its Gothic-inspired government center provides a living record of the immigrants who shaped it. This architectural topography, rising from the low lands of the Connecticut River canals up to the privileged residences above the central business district of High Street, forms a kind of cultural geography written in bricks, stones, wood and glass. The students’ impressions and feelings of this experience are recorded in their workbooks in the form of essays, poems, sketches and other creative expressions.

After reviewing so far many other architects, I share my own work and present them with new forms of sustainable design and green architecture to stimulate their thinking and feeling senses. We explore through graphic diagrams and interactive discussions the effects of architecture on a living Earth. Students come to realize that human beings must co-exist in respectful relation to the natural laws if we are to create a healthy and viable future. To deepen their personal synthesis of what we have studied, I pose serious questions for the students to ponder in the creation of their own life paths, such as:

v How will I personally meet the challenges of my time?

v What will I do to shape the world according to my own inner

Impulses and desires?

Also, in this important moment in the class, I present them with a very unusual lecture I call architecture without architects. Here, in my design for the class, I open a completely fresh look into the human-built world: innocent structures, spiritual monuments and environments created by naives and visionaries⁸who work outside the cultural collective.

During the final two weeks of the block, the students take on a special in-class project. Their assignment is to create an architecture – one that has a particular purpose in the world –and that holds a personal significance to the student that envisioned it. Each project is situated on the same imaginary site I created that contains a spring fed lake which provides constant water level, a sand beach, and a hill with a variety of trees and vegetation. Through a site analysis using diagrammatic studies of topography, sun and wind forces, views and other criteria, the students select the appropriate location to support the purpose for their architecture: on the land, into the land, in the trees, or on, below or above the water. Once their projects are grounded in a specific location, the potential of their stated impulse gains a universe of expression, depending on the individual intent and creative force of each student.

Each student is required to work in co-creation with one or two other students designing their own architectures on the same site. Some students choose to combine or otherwise collaborate to co-create shared or juxtaposed structures. Though the process of co-creation and collaborative design, the students begin to recognize a threefold relationship between their individual inner impulses, the world at large and other human beings.

The site is the same for all students and contains a spring fed lake (constant water level) with a beach, a sunny hill slope populated with a variety of trees and other vegetation. Through a site analysis using diagrammatic studies of topography, sun and wind forces, views and other criteria, the students select the appropriate location to support the purpose for their architecture: on the land, into the land, in the trees, or on, below or above the water. Once grounded, the potential of their stated impulse gains a universe of expression, depending on the individual intent and creative force of each student. Some students even choose to combine or otherwise collaborate to co-create shared or juxtaposed structures.

The in-class project allows class time for brief lectures and discussions. Each group grapples with issues of size, scale, boundary and space (the site is intentionally small). Working side-by-side, group members can’t help but overhear and take in the various ways in which other groups interrelate with one another and resolve their problems. The group learning that takes place teaches on many levels and encourages students to listen intently, speak assertively, negotiate respectfully, and amicably resolve their design intentions. Real-world difficulties of space, interaction, environmental considerations, practical issues and pressures to find workable design solutions are managed through this interactive, collaborative process. I offer heartfelt support to each student, but assist only as needed to bridge the most difficult gaps and inspire them to successfully complete the project requirements. This work must truly be of their own making to gain the result I desire for them. They learn to struggle through the difficult challenges of design: how to manifest their inner thoughts, images and desires of their minds and hearts – by virtue of their own labor - out into the forms of the world.

On the last day of class, with their projects finally ready, each student is required to stand before his/her classmates to present their visionary creations. Ideas molded into cohesive forms through many discussions and sketches are presented in the form of final drawings and models. Each student starts by reading the purpose of their architecture, followed by group presentations of 2-3 students. present its architectures and then the other students raise questions and start a dialogue for deeper learning. I add my own perceptions about the individual works, the qualities of their relationships and the effectiveness of their architectural solutions. More often than not, each student tends to create a form that is very much them – a manifestation in form of their unique inner psyche and spirit. More introverted students tend to have quieter designs, withdrawn behind trees, underwater, sometimes partially or totally underground. The more extroverted students are out on the surfaces of water or land, or even boldly suspended in the treetops. Where two students share a close bond, the architectures even become unified in a single formal expression of their inner ties.

History through Architecture awakens new perceptions in these high school seniors about their lives and their purposes. Everyday travels through city and country become informed by a more alert awareness of the world around them. The spaces of their school, their homes and community buildings become living records of the past that speak to them in the present. A renewed sense of the imperative for harmonious relationships between People, Architecture and Earth becomes apparent to them. My teaching offers many opportunities for the students to integrate the principles, phenomena and offerings of the course, and to apply them creatively to design solutions, to problem situations in other classes and in other relationships, both in the school community and in the world at large. My sincerest hope is that I have done nothing less than given them the gift of the World, an endowment that will live in them as they go out literally to create together a new human history: one that inspires us to live out the highest ideals of human beings: the deep spiritual qualities of the Egyptians; the egalitarian beliefs of the Greeks; the worldly organizing prowess of the Romans; the ancient cosmic practices of Chinese and Indian cultures and the students’ own inner intuitions and intentions for what is right, true and good in the world.