Inside Sweden's Minimalist Bergaliv Lookout Tower Hotel

A hyper minimalist remote hotel designed with a distinct Japanese sensibility and built high above the forest floor

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TF Editors

image courtesy Bergaliv

Insight and inspiration from the Field Mag editorial team, sharing decades of hard-earned experience and knowhow.

What makes old fire lookout towers so fascinating to so many outdoor lovers? The sweeping views and sparse living quarters, or maybe it’s the real sense of vulnerability and raw connection to nature? Whatever the case may be, this new one room “landscape hotel” in central Sweden captures something innately similar.

Bergaliv is a new hotel concept designed by architect Hanna Michelson of Stockholm-based Tham & Videgård Arkitekter. The first of more to come, the remote one-room cabin sits perched on 30-feet-tall stilts built into the hillside of a decommissioned ski slope. Defined by a skeletal structure with just over 90-square-feet of enclosed living space and a covered rooftop lookout with the same footprint, Lofthuset appears to float among the birch grove treetops with sweeping views of the Ljusnan River valley below.

While the pine and spruce exterior feels distinctly Scandinavian, the interior takes on more of a Japanese design aesthetic, with exposed structural elements, hand thrown ceramic dishes, futon mattresses and muted hues. There is very little to distract you here, and that’s by design—the goal of the “Loft House” is to give visitors a chance to reconnect with nature in peace, with wilderness within reach at all times.

With all that’s going on in the world, escaping into the outdoors for a bit is sounding pretty dang good right about now.