A Different Point of View.

Photos by Simon Thorogood.

The Schönbuchturn, a lookout tower in the Schönbuch Nature Reserve in Baden-Württemberg, affords stunning 360-degree panoramas of the Swabian landscape. Yet, as well as an impressive physical structure, the tower also serves as a conceptual device that reminds us to perpetually re-orientate our view of the world.

The Schönbuch is Baden-Württemberg’s oldest nature reserve and one of southern Germany’s largest enclosed forests. It is home to a variety of wildlife, including many rare and protected species.

The Schönbuchturn itself was completed in 2018, as a result of a student competition at the Hochschule für Technik, Stuttgart, and built on the Stellberg Hill, near the towns of Herrenberg and Boblingen. Via corkscrew steps, visitors can make their way up the structure and contemplate the scenery from one of three viewing platforms. At the top, views are spectacular and depending on the weather, one can see for many miles in all directions, taking in the Schlossberg Plateau, the Hecken and Korngäu plains, the Swabian Alps, and the Black Forest.

The glued larch wood and steel form is designed to sway, with movement becoming increasingly perceptible the higher one ascends. On a very windy day the experience can be quite unnerving, but even on the clear and relatively still day as evidenced here, the climb to the very top was still unsettling.

And so the Schönbuchturn is analogous as a medium to theoretically see things differently. Here, the higher one wishes to climb, the more one seeks to alter one’s vantage point, the further one looks out, the more challenging the task can become, and the more one’s balance can be upset by the sway in the wind.

But, as per the remarkable views from the top, the effort is worthwhile. Whatever the weather may be, and whatever the mindset may be, the dividends can be revelation, variation, transition and improvisation. That’s got to be worth the climb.