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Take a look inside Kengo Kuma's newly-opened Hans Christian Andersen Museum

2022-04-14T15:34:00-04:00

One of Denmark’s most highly publicized cultural projects has now officially begun its public operation after being previously inaugurated in a soft opening last June.

Set amongst a massive new public park that opened earlier in the fall, Kengo Kuma and Associates’ design for the new H.C.Andersen Hus museum in Odense is a “fantasy world” of interconnected circular forms which give shape to the museum’s more than 60,000 square feet of education centers and subterranean exhibition space.

Photo: Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST

Visitors can experience the physical dualities endemic in the architecture and inspired by classic Andersen tales like The Tinderbox and The Little Mermaid. After entering through an extension of the writer’s adjacent birth home, they begin their journey on the timber-clad upper level and descend into an unraveling underground labyrinth containing a “unique artistic experience” designed by Event Communications dotted with evocative commissi...

Kengo Kuma turns literary fantasy into an exciting spatial experience with the new Hans Christian Andersen Museum

2021-03-12T15:08:00-05:00

Kengo Kuma & Associates' new design for the Hans Christian Andersen Museum is underway. Pulling reference from Andersen's tales Kuma and his team bring the famed author and his writings to life in an exciting spatial experience. "The museum will provide a unique artistic experience, which combines landscape, architecture, and modern exhibition design, and it will offer new perspectives on one of the most beloved and creative thinkers in world history," shares the museum team.

The firm was selected for the museum project after winning first prize for the international design competition in 2016. Slated to open Summer 2021, visualizations of the project's dreamy outdoor landscapes complement Andersen's fantastical tales. The 60,277 square foot (5,600 square meters) museum site contains a children's house and an underground museum that intertwines with the garden.

Kuma was inspired by the author's fairytale "The Tinderbox" which tells the story of a soldier who learns of a magical un...