Everyone hates the Vessel, the stairway to nowhere for capitalism’s grifters at the heart of New York’s latest mirage of a neighborhood, Hudson Yards. Perhaps that’s why it’s so refreshing to see an observation tower that actually leads somewhere meaningful beyond an Instagram selfie frame: the Camp Adventure Observation Tower in Denmark.
While the Vessel is a “colossal shawarma” shoehorned between skyscrapers that, according to its critics, amounts to nothing more than an Instagram-friendly panopticon to obverse others and be observed, this observation tower has a higher purpose.
Here, your perspective of the forest shifts gradually as you climb. The land reveals itself in all its glorious beauty, as the architects describe it: “A glacial woodland characterized by rolling hills, ephemeral streams, lakes, wetlands, and meadows [. . . ] a changing landscape experience that is influenced by the rich bird life and the seasons changes.”
This is architecture at its best: thoughtful of both the people using it and the environment surrounding it. Unlike some buildings we know.