Skovtårnet
Interesting facts
- The tower's vertical Corten steel tubes twist through 120 degrees from base to top, giving the structure its spiralling look.
- Built from steel and oak, the finished tower weighs about 600 tonnes, yet its waist narrows to a slender core.
- The ramp is surfaced with about 7,750 boards of certified South Zealand oak from the Bregentved and Gisselfeld estates.
- The ramp coils through twelve circular levels, and its slope dictated the tower's whole geometry so that everyone can reach the top without steps.
- Trees from the surrounding forest grow up inside the open core of the tower.
- The structure was engineered by Arup, built by Levi Jensen, and its steelwork was fabricated and assembled by JVP Steel.
- TIME magazine named the tower one of the World's Greatest Places in 2019.
- It won the Danish Steel Prize in 2020 and a European Steel Award of Merit in 2021, and was nominated for the 2022 Mies van der Rohe Prize.
- Before it was even built, the design won first place at the ICONIC Awards 2017.
Why it is worth it
Rising out of the woods of the Gisselfeld estate on Zealand, Skovtårnet, the Forest Tower, is shaped like an hourglass twisted around its own axis. Its slender waist and flaring crown are formed by a lattice of weathering steel and timber, and a single spiral ramp winds up through the structure from the forest floor to a viewing platform 45 m above the ground.
The tower was designed by the Danish practice EFFEKT Arkitekter as part of Camp Adventure, a treetop park in the Gisselfeld Kloster forest. Construction started in 2017 and the tower opened in March 2019. Its geometry is a hyperboloid, a form built entirely from straight members set at an angle so that together they describe a curved surface. The structure combines Corten steel with oak from certified local forests, and the 650 m ramp climbs at a gentle gradient of about 7.5 percent, so that the walk to the top becomes a slow journey through the forest canopy. Visitors pass first among the trunks, then through the crowns, and finally emerge above the trees.
From the top the view opens in every direction over the lakes, fields and woods of southern Zealand; because the ground beneath already stands high, the platform reaches about 135 m above sea level and is the highest point from which to look out over the island. The forest belongs to Gisselfeld Kloster, a moated Renaissance manor built between 1547 and 1575 by the nobleman Peder Oxe, whose estate covers some 3,850 hectares, the majority of it woodland.
Getting there
Skovtårnet stands in the Gisselfeld forest near Rønnede, about 3 km from the village and about 14 km from the town of Næstved. Copenhagen Airport (CPH) is about 59 km away in a straight line; the closer Copenhagen Roskilde Airport (RKE), about 38 km away, serves general aviation.
On these lists
55.25315, 11.97700per Wikidata