Kengo Kuma takes cue from fairytales for literary museum

The new H. C. Andersens Hus is set to open this Summer, offering an artistic experience that combines landscape, architecture and modern exhibition design. In 2016, Kengo Kuma and museum design consultancy Event Communications won an international competition to create a new House of Fairytales concept for the Hans Christian Andersen Museum in Odense. A core concept of the winning design is the aspect of fairytales that transforms the everyday into the magical, blurring the line between the world as we know it and other possibilities. 

The building covers an area of 5,600 sq m, containing a children's house and an underground museum that merges with a surrounding garden. The design takes a cue from Andersen’s fairy tale Fyrtøjet, in which a wood leads to an underground world that opens up new perspectives to the viewer. "The idea behind the architectural design resembled Andersen's method, where a small world suddenly expands to a bigger universe," explains Kengo Kuma.

The museum spaces are composed of a series of circular forms, tangent to each other like the segments of a chain. A curved linear green wall traces the underground structure and defines the garden, meandering both above and below ground level. The underground world is connected to the garden through a space that appears like a hole in the ground, representing a “portal” from the fairytale realm to the world outside.

Creative Director of H.C. Andersens Hus, Henrik Lübker, states: "H.C. Andersen's artistic universe is fantastic because it turns the notions of the world you thought you knew upside down, but without putting anything else in its place. His adventures point not to a new unambiguous truth, but to the open – to the wonder and diversity of the world. At H.C. Andersens Hus, we maintain the ambiguity of using Andersen's own artistic strategies as a starting point for both the design of the garden, house and exhibition, and as a starting point for the many artistic contributions that become part of the museum.”

Lucy Nordberg
TenderStream Head of Research

This tender was first published by TenderStream on 03.07.2015 here

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