House of Fairy Tales

The House of Fairy Tales

Hans Christian Andersen was born in a charming neighborhood in the historic center of Odense, where his birth house is still preserved. Attached to it, and partly surrounding a public garden, a museum and a cultural center currently present the author’s life and work. The challenging assignment calls for a substantial enlargement of both garden and museum, but on the very same location they now occupy. Our answer is to cover the whole site with a large Fairytale Garden, and to put under it most of the new museum: the House of Fairytales.

The Fairytale Garden, with its forest, its pond, and its paper cut shaped flower beds, is inspired by Andersen’s fantasy world, while the medicinal plants and trees to be used are drawn from the memory of the site, where an old apothecary garden once stood. Interplaying with the physical garden, a virtual layer, accessible through all smart mobile electronic devices, offers an additional gateway to Andersen’s imaginary world, and to the history and present of the site.

Paper cutting, one of Andersen’s favorite art forms, provides the strategy through which the House of Fairytales and the Fairytale Garden are brought into a symbiotic relation: the ground is cut and molded, and, through the biggest cut, the garden lets us in. Here we find the entrance foyer, the café, and the shop, all broadly opening towards the garden. From the foyer, through a huge light shaft, we take a slide down into the Fairytales World. There, through an immersive, state-of-the-art and didactic experience, we discover the most famous fairytales, and, from them, we learn about their author’s life and work.

A big lift takes us up then, and we enter the Treasure World, where we can get to know Andersen closer, visit his birth house and interactively discover the jewels of his literature and artworks.

Together, the House of Fairytales and the Fairytale Garden take us on a wonderful journey into the fantastic and profound universe of Hans Christian Andersen’s imagination.

The Green Connections and the Urban Weaving

The North-South Urban Green Connector and the East-West Urban Connections

“...making paper cuts is the first step towards writing” H.C.Andersen

The Table Cloth papercut by H.C.Andersen

The Paper Cutting Strategy
as a strategy for the symbiosis of Fairy Tales Garden and the House of Fairy Tales

The Fairytale Garden

The Fairy Tale Garden and The House of the Fairy Tales

Garden plan and section through The House of Fairy Tales

Program and Circulations

The public areas are at the garden level and open generously onto it.

The fantasy world of The Fairy Tales world is located under the garden.

These two levels are linked by two slides, one fast, one slow, within a light courtyard.

Axonometry of the project with the different levels

The Foyer

Together with the café and the shop, form an open see-through extention of the Fairytale Garden. The oculus lights the Foyer and The Light Shaft, which has a palm tree in the middle and slides that wind around it, down into to the Fairytales World.

The Light Shaft

with the palm tree and with the two slides, one faster and one slower, that go down into the Fairytales World.

The Fairytales Hall

is the core of the Fairytales World. The fairytale gates invite us to step into Andersen’s most famous tales.

A cohesive experience

The House of Fairytales and its Fairytale Garden will bring together the following elements into a cohesive whole: the fairytales and their author, the different age and cultural groups, the exterior and interior and the past and the present. All these elements together form a complete and unique experience.

The Tinderbox: an Interactive Exploration Kit

In order to engage the public and to give a solid thread to the experience, we propose to provide the visitors with an exploration kit: the Tinderbox. For it, we draw inspiration from Andersen’s fairytale “The Tinderbox”, where the tinderbox is a box with magic objects that can fulfill their owner’s wishes.

The Fairytales World

is the main gateway to Andersen’s fantasic universe. Located under the Fairytale Garden, here visitors can step into Andersen’s most famous fairytales, and through them, get to know their author. Each of the tales forms a unique Fairytale Experience, composed of three parts:
-Andersen tells a tale! In different moments of his life, and in the main settings where he actually told his tales, the author himself, in the form of an ultrarealistic 3D projection, tells the tale as an introduction to the experience.
-Play and Learn We learn about Andersen through his tales.The facts from the author’s life and work that influenced the tale are revealed and visitors engage in didactic and creative activites related to the tale.
-The Experience It’s where the main features of the tale are spectacularly shown.