Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) has designed an alternative Christmas Tree installed at the courtyard of Utzon Center in Aalborg, Denmark. Lattice-formed Christmas Tree is presented as part of the exhibition Sky’s the Limit, which is on display at Utzon Center until January 15, 2017.

SOM's Christmas Tree forms a huge hollow inside, which allows people to get in and experience the structure in three dimension. The colourful steel-sculpture's cells are multiplied as it reaches upward and seems full layer by layer. 

SOM's Christmas Tree is displayed at the courtyard from December 1 and emerges as a collaborative work between some of the world’s best architects, engineers and lighting designers. 

Christmas Tree reaches 7 metres (23 ft.) tall -and was built from the famous Peter Lassen GRID. 1.000 square GRID elements and ever-changing illumination from colourful lights, the most alternative version of a Christmas tree in Aalborg rises from the courtyard.

''Stepping into the middle of a Christmas tree and getting that different and, in some ways, mind-bending experience of space and design, is not something you can experience elsewhere in Denmark'', says Lasse Andersson, creative director at Utzon Center.

The process has indeed been a collaborative process. In just three weeks, SOM has designed the shape of the tree and Steensen Warming has supplied the lighting design. GRID Montana and Peter Lassen are sponsoring the grid and Martin Harman the lights. 

The Christmas tree is a part of the exhibition, Sky’s the Limit, which is on display at Utzon Center until January 15, 2017. The Christmas tree is on display until the end of January.

Sky’s the Limit exhibition at the Utzon Center presents SOM's engineering legacy in architecture through sketches, renderings and scale models of notable skyscrapers, the exhibition captures SOM’s innovative integration of structural expression and architectural design that is a defining tenet of the firm’s work. 

This close collaboration has produced distinctive engineering solutions to contemporary architectural challenges—expanding the parameters of building construction. Besides that, inspired by the hand-built exhibition models, visitors are be able to build their own structures with LEGO bricks before entering a virtual reality in Minecraft placing them at the pinnacle of their imagination’s tallest building.

All images © Allan Toft  

> via Utzon Center