architectureyes

house of fairy tales . odense

architectureyes . house of fairy tales

The Museum of Christian Andersen wants to be the alive memory of the writer but also the mausoleum of his dreams. The straightforwardness of his pass through life is referred in the nudity and roughness of the main material elected for the building: concrete. The severe texture in the facade talks about all the difficulties he had to cope with, but in contrast, as we enter to the building we discover a complete different world were imagination rules.

Light enters to the building adapting itself to the solid contours of it, demonstrating that capacity ductile to adapt and transform the existing. Just as Christian Andersen explores the ability to surprise and overcome; present in all the main characters he created; arousing eventually the curiosity or need to understand the meaning of their own existence. Just by developing formally simple tales, but charged with enormous background complexity, that talk about personal relations.
This museum promotes this interrelacional by creating spaces were people is attracted by the atmosphere and guided naturally trough it by the illumination that comes from the "outside".
The generous in size skylights and the almost inexistent openings to the exterior emphasizes the importance of the materiality and space braking with the overfall of everyday routine where time leads in terms of speculation and profitability.
Inside our building the time stops, the cenital light dematerialise the structural space and abstract us from the daytime of light and space and personal relations, like in the Andersen tales; are encouraged. This museum is thought as a space were multi-aged groups of people can gather to remember Andersen tales and to "reinvent" those stories with their own experiences.

design team: Roberto Ortiz de Landázuri Monagas, Ignacio García Martínez, Jaime Diz Sanz, Kenzo Hosokawa Menendez.