House of Fairtales

The new HCA museum is seen as a blurring machine which plays along the relationship between the real and the fictional, the public and private, the existing and the new.
Our departing point is to structure the museum through two main parts: the depository of real life (the existing memorial hall which witnesses about HCA's real life) and the depository of fiction (the new addition which contains the underworld landscape of HCA's fairytales). The encounter between these two worlds unfolds in a descending public pathway which also leads to the main entrance.

The depository of real life

The depository of real life uses the Memorial Hall both as a leitmotif and as an organizational element. In this small scale historical structure(s) the trajectory from HCA's birth to death is shown, a story that revolves around the Hall. This part also provides the main entrance to the museum and a place for cafeteria and shop.

The depository of fiction

The depository of fiction is a subterranean space within which the literary work of HCA is presented. It is an open and flexible space customized for different exhibition concepts. In the current proposal we illustrate a situation where every story gets its own cell. The spatial atmosphere is given by a slightly meandering roof and the inverted periscopes operated by the people in Lotzes Have. If the depository of real life is something permanent, then the depository of fiction is something transient.

Lotzes Have

The intention behind the project is to create a high degree of publicness in and around the museum. The museum's main part is submerged - this maintains the idea of Lotzes Have as an open and accessible space for the public. Lotzes Have is conceptualized as a green park thematized around HCA, with interaction possibility to the depository of fiction.

Developmental possibilities

The developmental flexibility of the project is given by two simple architectural operations: by submerging the main body of the new museum and with implementation of the descending pathway. The submerged volume has the footprint of 4000 m2 if approached as one level structure; respectively this relationship may be altered in favor of smaller footprint while having two or more levels. Either way, Lotzes Have is on top as a continuation of the city's public space adjoining from the surrounding streets. The implementation of descending public pathway is a spatial intervention that allows the natural light and visibility into the subterranean museum structure.

The Walk

One walks from the street into the park, looks through the periscopes into the underworld landscape of HCA's fairytales, starts descending on the public pathway - the stage - along the transparent wall of the depository of fiction, comes to the museum entrance, gets the story of HCA's life and moves further into the new museum, into the depository of fiction. The movement of the periscopes witnesses of an outside - the real world.