The New H.C. Andersen Museum in Odense

As the country’s third largest city and H.C. Andersen’s birth town, the City Council in Odense decided in 2016 that the existing H.C. Andersen Museum should be replaced by a new and larger international format. An architectural team consisting of Japanese Kengo Kuma, Danish Cornelius+Vöge, and Danish-Finnish MASU Planning  designed a museum where everything is round. Underground and above ground. Inside and outside. The circular forms were designed to enthral the museum guests, circle by circle, in the special universe of H.C. Andersen.

Since then, a large number of contractors, craftsmen and specialists, including LE34, have become the team that turns the drawings into reality. Today the building is well under way – and the circular buildings with green roofs and the circular fairytale garden have taken shape; the small museum has spread its wings like a swan.

Photos: Kindly lent by Kengo Kuma Architects and Associates, Cornelius+Vöge Architects and Odense Municipality.

H.C. Andersen is known for his fairytales. At LE34 we are known for being the main thread on large construction projects, where we link the process – from the legal foundation with property formation to technical services such as setting out, fixed points and deformation monitoring. Our role in The New H.C. Andersen Museum is no exception. And yet…

Our role is almost even more important than in other construction projects where the buildings are square. Everything in the new HCA Museum is round, and it poses challenges for all involved contractors and consultants. Therefore, LE34’s control measurements and highly accurate setting-out work are absolutely crucial to the client, Odense Municipality. We check that the construction is completed as designed and planned – we continuously check all the details of the building as it progresses. Including checking that the construction is correctly positioned, that it not tilting, and that the round forms are dead straight, inside and out.

Furthermore, early in the project we secured the legal foundation of the municipality’s project by establishing and setting out boundaries for the new museum.

LE34’s team of chartered land surveyors and survey technicians is often at the construction site. We act as an extra crew for Aarsleff contractors when, at peak loads, there is a need for many set-outs within a short time horizon, and for NCC contractors during holiday periods. This is a comprehensive setting-out process in which we set out significantly more points than usual – because everything is round or skewed. Even floors and roofs have skewed angles, and we use both total station and scanning to collect enough detailed data to work from.

Every time a project subcontracter finishes, we carry out control measurements to ensure that the next subcontractor can build on a proper foundation. Large parts of the museum are below ground, and all floors must match to the millimetre. Furthermore, the contract is divided between Aarsleff and NCC, each of which is responsible for the construction below and above the ground, respectively, which means that part of our responsibility is also to check that the work of the two contractors is compatible – it is after all the same building, all the way up from the basement level to the top floor.

At the HCA Museum site, we carry out tasks for a majority of the contractors involved – this also applies to Linde El, landscapers OKNygaard, and to the sale of ventilation for Aarsleff. The fact that there is a need for a land surveyor company to set out, in particular precision setting out, for cables and pipes, outlets and ventilation systems, is very unusual.

Normally, electrical and ventilation companies can do their installations properly themselves, but due to the museum’s circular shapes and lack of square angles, an exceptionally precise location of electricity and ventilation was needed. In this way, we helped to ensure that the installations would fit together between the different floors.

The landscaper OKNygaard also usually sets out itself – using strings and sticks – but the round shapes throughout the new garden mean that there was also a need to ensure that the different elements of the garden were correctly aligned and ensure the correct dimension of each element. LE34 has completed precision setting out with an accuracy of better than 10 mm.