A floating beacon for Denmark’s largest marine nature park
Collaborators
EFFEKT, Krohns
Location
Lillebælt straight
Role
Architect
Timeline
2025 - ongoing
Sømærket is a floating educational platform and maritime beacon for Nature Park Lillebælt, Denmark’s largest marine nature park. Designed by MAST in collaboration with EFFEKT, it connects Middelfart, Kolding, and Fredericia through a movable structure that operates across the strait. The project reinterprets historic Danish seamarks as a contemporary floating typology, combining exhibition spaces, a laboratory, and immersive underwater environments. It offers new public access to the marine landscape through activities such as kayaking, diving, swimming, and fishing, while communicating the ecological value of the strait.
Rising as a pyramidal beacon above the water, Sømærket acts as both landmark and educational infrastructure. Constructed from Douglas fir and a repurposed concrete barge, it establishes a new civic interface between people and the marine environment.
The floating platform connects future generations with the blue nature around us and serves as a floating landmark for the nature park. Its dramatic pyramidal structure stands 7 meters above the water, projecting from the harbours and acting as a visual beacon. The upper deck offers panoramic views, while a small ‘crow’s nest,’ accessible via a short climb through a fishnet tunnel, provides braver visitors with an even more spectacular view.
The platform is constructed from hefty locally sourced Douglas fir beams and the reclaimed concrete barge has had many previous lives over the past 20 years including as the base of a floating house and a temporary pavilion for the UIA architecture festival. The barge was rescued from demolition for the project.
Communicating the wonders of life below water has never been more urgent than now.
Nature Park Lillebælt, connecting continental Jutland and the island of Funen, has a unique natural environment and history. SØMÆRKET tells this story through printed fossils, illustrations, and text scattered around the structure. It includes an enclosed laboratory space for experiments and storytelling. Below deck, an underwater room projects underwater footage on raw concrete walls. The platform also offers direct experiences of the strait, with a kayak launch point, swimming platform, and an integrated seaweed and mussel farm.
