Tapia Figueiras

house of fairy tales . odense

Tapia Figueiras . house of fairy tales

The aim of the competition is to create a house of fairytales in odense like a gateway to the universe of hans christian andersen.

Objective analisis
the competition lot has not a formal unity which is very perceptible in the architecture of the current museum and its visual relationship between with the lotze’s garden. Not keeping the museum building and
the tinderbox cultural in their current state (because of its lack of architectonical and urban unity) will
present a challenge: it will be necessary to search for a good urban solution to the amalgam of the townhouse’s sidewalls, providing a new and high quality unity and coherence to the new lot’s edges and
also a real overall space concept for the house of fairytales and the fairytale garden.

Theory of intervention
it is taken as a starting point the need to build a new focus of attraction to this area of the centre of odense with a museum and a green space whose image give the place its own powerful identity.
We think that the location of the new house of fairytales, by its specific conditions, requires an optimistic intervention which qualifies the set of spaces and buildings that surround it. This will provide the project with a pragmatic, balanced and representative status which is integrated in the area, promoting, at the same time, the eastern part of the historic centre of odense, as in if same as forming part of the landscape of the city.
This proposal for the house of fairytales is structured based on a compositional grid system but open and
flexible, which allows setting the rules of the game for the whole area. Thereby, it will be regularized the
complex image of the park with all of the townhouses’ sidewalls in the north and east plot’s edges.
We propose a compositional system composed by a set of elements and their own laws of particular
behavior. These elements (sloping roofs with skylight and square plan) are concentrated next to the start
point of the project (the birthplace, the memorial hall and the preserved houses located along the hans
jensens and bangs boder streets). From this point, the elements are along the area to give, for instance,
natural lightning to spaces located in the basement floor or even to accommodate the emergency exits of two car parks located on the west of the competition area. Then, the repetition of the same elements is organized based on the needs of the plot and circumstances independent of the grid.

The building
the design is based on the creation of museum of two heights (basement floor and ground floor) which
will be illuminated through the skylights and some disseminated new courtyards opened in the basement floor. Actually, the new garden will be mostly the green roof of the basement floor level of the house of fairytales which will serve as a new park for the community.
Thanks to the dispersed location of pieces with skylights and courtyards, green spaces of different
features (such as small plots within a large green area) will be created.
Two accesses are proposed. The first one, near the former thomas b thriges street, through a new square, which will be the main entrance for visitors who come from the city centre, or by the light rail, by bike
or going out the car park. The other one, will be opened from the bangs boder street and it will be used by groups, the staff and like loading dock.
On the ground floor and with views towards the big green space the visitor’s facilities will be located, like
the shop, cafe —restaurant and the presentation room. This area will be the closest to the memorial hall
and will serve as the start point of all the visitors’ tours. The exhibition (work and art) will be held
mostly in the basement floor, always enjoying natural, soft, diffuse and controlled lightning. Also in this
level also it will appear the children's areas, including storytelling room, workshops for children and
even the offices. Al of them will be illuminated in a natural way thanks to the opening of patios along the garden.