Johannes Schuster

Johannes is one of the founders, first Class Teacher and former Administrator and School-Coordinator of the Little Yarra Steiner School. (www.lyss.vic.edu.au ) From the early beginnings of the school his vision of the school was that of an inspiring, spiritually based cultural- educational center in the Yarra Valley.

His passion was to create a place of both natural and architectural beauty, where the architecture reflected the educational and spiritual aspirations of the school, where music and the arts and natural sciences could  flourish within a supportive human and an artistically crafted physical environment. Out of this vision he helped guide the school’s development and designed and project managed its buildings during the first two decades of its establishment phase. Over the 20 years of his involvement with the school he witnessed its growth from a handful of children in a hired public hall, to a full Kindergarten to Class 12 School of over 300 students, on its own 60 acre property in the outer reaches of Melbourne.

Over the years of the school’s growth Johannes pioneered a particular approach to design, which he now defines as “Biosculptural” Architecture and which he documented in 2007 as part of the school’s revision and documentation of a new Master Plan.It was this approach which brought the Little Yarra Steiner School to the attention of colleagues from the European Organic Architecture Movement. The school was featured in a number of overseas publications and is currently part of a traveling exhibition on “Organic Architecture” displayed in various capital cities in Europe and Asia.

Initially starting out as a teacher coming from a purely educational perspective, as Johannes became involved with the design and building program of the Little Yarra Steiner School, the question of how FORM relates to Life forces, universal values and spiritual realities became a central focus. His interest in the formative qualities of life forces eventually led him to work on the formulation of  a Universal, Architectural Language of Form based on the 4 Ethers, which in turn was able to give rise to an architectural approach that placed the morally transformative power of inspired artistic form as its central aim.

Between 2011 – 2015 Johannes was offering a number of courses on the “Architecture of Universal Beauty” (AUB), whose central theme is the spiritually transformative effects of  Art and Architecture. In 2015 Johannes was invited by IFMA (International Forum Mensch+Architektur ) and the Section for Visual Art at the Goetheanum  to run  a 7 day Seminar on the theme: Towards a Language of Form in Art and Nature – The 4 Ethers as bridge between Spirit and Matter.  A continuation of the Seminar on the theme:  Etheric Forces and Creative Process as Bridge between Spirit and Matter – was held at the Goetheanum in July 2016.