"In the mirror I'm wearing enormous golden pantaloons, but only I can see them. Children sit in a rock pool playing mermaids, and in the next room there's a talking pea in a display case, beside a towering stack of mattresses. It's the world of Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), one of the 19th century's most beloved writers. I'm in Odense, on the island of Fyn (sometimes anglicised to Funen) in the south of Denmark,"
"The redesign of Odense city centre, rerouting a major road, provided the opportunity to reimagine how the city's most famous son could be honoured. A major architecture competition awarded Japanese firm Kengo Kuma and Associates the contract, with the curators' new approach at the core of the design. The distinctive timber-clad museum with interlinked spiralling spaces opened to great fanfare in 2021."
"We've tried to create a space where we don't talk about Andersen, but we talk like Andersen: with humour, irony and perspective, says Friis. Even the gardens take this approach: It's a garden for wanderers and for giants, it's designed to make you feel small, he says, a challenge achieved by clever planting, playing with height, scale and many winding paths in a deceptively small space."
HC Andersens Hus in Odense reimagines Hans Christian Andersen's legacy through immersive exhibits and architecture. Earlier iterations of the museum emphasized the writer's life but lacked representation of his fairytales. A city-centre redesign and an architecture competition led to Kengo Kuma and Associates designing a timber-clad museum with interlinked spiralling spaces that opened in 2021. The curators structured the museum to 'talk like Andersen' using humour, irony and shifting perspectives. Gardens and exhibits play with scale and perspective to make visitors feel small and to evoke Andersen's contradictions and storytelling voice.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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