Hans Christian Hansen Biography
Hans Christian Hansen was born in Copenhagen in 1803. He attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen starting in 1816, when he was just 13 years old, dedicating himself to architectural studies under the guidance of two important masters of the time, Christian Frederik Hansen and Gustav Friedrich Hetsch. Christian Frederik Hansen gave him a rational approach to architecture, while Hetsch introduced him to Karl Friedrich Schinkel, whose ideas exerted an important influence in Denmark.
In 1831, Hans Christian Hansen was awarded the prestigious award of the Academy's large gold medal and a travel scholarship. During this period, he undertook a trip to Italy and Greece, initially spending two years in Italy, mainly in Rome and Sicily. In 1833, he traveled to Athens, the new capital of newly independent Greece, which was experiencing a process of transformation from a small village to a modern metropolis, chosen for historical and sentimental reasons.
Hansen gained the sympathies of King Otto of Greece and in 1834 was appointed court architect. In 1838, his brother Theophilus, who had studied architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen but failed to obtain commissions, joined him in Athens.
Hans Christian Hansen's most famous work in Athens is the original main building of the National and Koper University of Athens. The construction of this structure, carried out mainly with the proceeds of a fundraising campaign among Greeks at home and abroad, began in 1839 and was inaugurated in 1841. Due to the lack of financing, however, the work was only fully completed in 1864. The building is made of marble, in a style known as Neo-Hellenic Classicism or Greek Revival, and is considered one of the most important examples of this architectural genre, as well as a source of inspiration for many other buildings constructed in the same period, particularly in Germany. The structure is part of what is called the "neoclassical" or "Athenian" trilogy, completed by Hans Christian Hansen's brother with the Academy of Athens and the National Library of Greece.
Hansen's work in Athens also involved involvement in archaeological excavations and research. In collaboration with the German architect Eduard Schaubert, he worked on the excavation and reconstruction of the Temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis and contributed to the collection of material for Joseph Hoffer's account of horizontal curvature and optical corrections in Greek temples.
Hans Christian Hansen died in 1883.
