Theosophy and Architecture (part 2)
Marty Th. Bax – The Netherlands
Theosophy and Architecture: K. P. C. de Bazel’s Dutch Trading Company Building in Amsterdam.
[This essay was first published in Masonic and Esoteric Heritage: New Perspectives for Art and Heritage Policies. Proceedings of the First International Conference of the OVN, Foundation for the Advancement of Academic Research into the History of Freemasonry in the Netherlands, October 20-21, 2005. Ed. A. Kroon, M. Bax, J. Snoek. The Hague, Netherlands: OVN Foundation, 2005. It is reproduced here in a revised form.]
Theosophy and Architecture (part 2)
Chaos
On the exterior, lines are expressed in a subtler form, but before I elaborate on this, I first want to discuss the overall design. The building rests on a foundation of coarsely cut, greyish-green stone, called syenite (a granite-like igneous stone) from Hessen, Germany. De Bazel became acquainted with this type of stone through Lauweriks in 1912, when he visited his friend Lauweriks at his inauguration as the new head of the German section of the Theosophical Society. (Lauweriks thus was successor to Rudolf Steiner, who had just withdrawn to found his Anthroposophical Society.) This dark foundation of syenite can Theosophically be explained as ‘dense matter’. To the Theosophist this is the first and ‘lowest’ of the three main stages of cosmic evolution. It is chaos, the pre-mineral, undifferentiated cosmic state of matter from which all forms emerge.
Optically the foundation forms a solid, immovable block of granite although, apart from the entrance, two small shops penetrate the façade. These shops were not De Bazel’s idea, by the way. They were forced upon him by both the directors and the municipality. The directors wanted to have small cashier shops and the municipality thought the façade would appear more inviting to the public passing by. But they never served the purpose in the end. These are the parts of the façade which are now under much dispute between the City of Amsterdam and the Cultural Heritage Office.