RebildPorten is a new visitor’s centre and exhibition space for one of the most beautiful and popular tourist destinations in northern Denmark: Rebild Hills and Rold Forest. This area in northern Jutland forms a unique nature reserve, and thus the area holds an extraordinary potential for offering spectacular experiences in this very distinctive rolling landscape. RebildPorten creates a new gathering point that informs, inspires and activates the visitors - an ideal setting for the narrative about the cultural history and nature experiences in these unique surroundings.
RebildPorten’s distinctive expression and character are derived directly from Nature’s own formal language and elements. The structure is designed as a hymn to Nature and the hills and forest, next to which it is situated. It is created in the encounter of building and nature and appears as a sculptural structure made of bluff timber, thus making the building accessible to the eye of the observer - very similar to a forest’s opening and closing when one moves through it, looking upwards through the branches’ chaotic network of crossing lines.
By shaping the building out of raw cut timber, the visitor not only experiences a ‘walk in the forest’, and a particular atmosphere determined by Nature’s own strength and rustic weight, but also the scent of wood and nature, which sets the mood for the visit to the forest and hills.