Building Narratives

House of Fairytales  Odense DK 2015,  with De Gayardon Bureau

A fairytale is in many ways a journey. A journey from the real into the realm of imagination. A journey filled with rich experiences, characters, and surprises, that teaches one about the world and also about one’s self. We envision the House of Fairy-tales in the exact same way, as a series of interconnecting realities and atmospheres, where each visit becomes a unique, self narrated journey or fairytale in its own right.

Our proposal consists of three intersecting worlds collectively making the House of Fairy-tales; the garden, the monuments and the labyrinth. On street level, an inviting park is integrated into the urban fabric of Odense and the existing H.C. Andersen museum. Scattered around the park are 6 pavilions or mini monuments. 

Each monument is a door into the museum but also a door into the world of fairy-tales. They each represent and house a different medium through which fairy-tales and the works of H.C. Andersen are communicated to the world. These doors immerse you in the world of fairy-tales while also physically bringing you down into the museum proper, the labyrinth, buried beneath the park. The monuments are also doors from the museum to the city of Odense, inviting through their varied programs, Odense into the museum, guaranteeing that the museum grows and lives with the city.

The labyrinth is a limitless series of chambers and passages. Each chamber represents a different context or atmosphere common to many fairy-tales, for example the meadow, the village, the mountain etc. The Chambers are connected by multiple passages, ensuring a plentiful choice of routes. The entire House of Fairy-tales, becomes the infinite number of journeys through these worlds, with each visitor creating a new and unique narrative  depending on their own choices. The House of Fairy-tales becomes a self curated museum, with traditional layouts abandoned in order to create an immersive, vibrant and potentially limitless museum.