HOUSE OF FAIRYTALEShttp://houseoffairytales.odense.dk/gallery/nggallery/page/6/image/466_90486/

JOURNEY THROUGH HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN'S LIFE: A COGNITIVE APPROACH

Summary

Andersen's stories had always been inspired from his real life experiences. The design intends to identify those connections and interweave them into the visitor's journey. His style of writing and interpreting things were unique: The feelings he tries to transfer to the readers, his world of curiosity, fascination, depression, loneliness etc. The whole experience can be condensed into an interesting storyline, narrated by the architecture of these spaces.

            We started the design charrette by creating a plotted life-journey of Hans Andersen. This graph is based on two aspects of Andersen's life- the 'Timeline' in years represented on X-axis, and distinct 'Emotional States’ represented on Y-axis. Starting point of the timeline is set at Andersen's Birth, and runs throughout his whole lifetime, yet it doesn't stop there and continuously run along. Positive emotional states are marked above the horizontal axis while negative emotional states are marked below it. Thus, the Graph represents important events/incidents in Andersen's life and challenges faced by the writer during his lifetime. The fairy tales that draw inspiration from the real events in his life and those that are closely associated with the corresponding emotions guide the circulation of the visitors inside the building. Hence, the overall experience of the visitors relies upon cognitive mapping, and as a result, visitors gain insights into the writer’s life as well as the fairy tale Universe he created: wherein its characters still continue to live  in the minds of the readers unfailingly getting across the messages and morals of each story.