Atelier GABU's hand-built timber and fabric lookout tower in Vaudémont, France

Brunebasse is a temporary observation tower that architecture studio Atelier GABU designed and built for the 2021 edition of L'Écho du Marteau, a festival given over to architectural experiment. It stands on a hillside in Vaudémont, in northeastern France, directly facing Brunehaut, the heavy stone remains of a medieval keep. Rather than echo that defensive mass, the studio went the other way: an open grid of slender timber that puts the view first and enclosure second.

The team assembled it entirely by hand, without power tools, treating the project as an exercise in using little material and leaving a light footprint. Some bays are wrapped in a semi-transparent textile that softens the daylight but still lets you see out to the fields and treetops. The detail you'd notice is the shadow play: as the sun moves, the diagonal bracing is cast across the fabric in shifting geometric patterns, so the way the structure works can be read from inside and from the hillside below. Visitors climb up through the internal levels to an open, unroofed deck at the top.

Worth knowing: this came to designboom as a reader submission, and it was built as a temporary piece, so check whether it still stands before planning a trip. The ruined keep it answers is there either way.

Our summary of a story from designboom, published 7 November 2026. Read the original

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