Hans Christian Andersen HOUSE OF FAIRYTALES
Competition.
Odense, Danimarca.
The project is conceived as a place where you can meet Andersen’s life and fairytales universe.
The decision to demolish the Tinderbox and the other buildings of the museum, except for the four buildings to preserve, has been taken analyzing the interior and the exterior space of those buildings, which have proved not to be adequate to house what is no longer a museum, but The House of Fairytales (HOF), and aiming to join the eastern and the western parts of the city by the realization of a Fairytales Garden (FG).
The shape of the HOF is intimately related to the FG, which vertically multiplies its size merging itself with the building into one imaginative Fairytalescape characterized by the creation of the Fairytalesquare. This one is a public space surrounded by mirrored glass façades of the building, reflecting everything around it and mixing randomly the reflected images, and by a green ramp turning into a hanging garden on the top of a wing of the HOF.
To link the architecture of the HOF to its surroundings, besides using a traditional material like bricks for the external walls on Bangs Boder and H. Jensens Stræde, the HOF is shaped so that to follow the decreasing heights pattern of the Cityscape buildings, sloping down from north to south, ideally connecting the last Cityscape building to the FG.
The HOF’s exhibition room is a big white open space including Andersen’s birthplace, the Memorial Hall and the two Townhouses, where cubic white boxes, the Talesboxes, have been arranged so that to create spaces where the current museum’s collection related to Andersen’s life can be placed. Inside the boxes Andersen’s fairytales are represented merging within the same path Andersen’s life and universe.
TheTinderbox is a wide space, where families can play an interactive role which is visually connected to the museum by a squared window on the floor, in order to blend the presentation of the fairytales, the writer and his life with a world of imagination and fun.
