Denmark’s Tallest Timber Tower Tests Circular Construction at Scale

By Petra Loho
Metropolis Magazine
March 20, 2026
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: International

In Denmark’s second-largest city, a former industrial harbor—now redeveloped as a mixed-use district— hosts a roughly 260-foot-tall building that confronts one of architecture’s hardest questions: can the high-rise, arguably the most carbon-intensive urban typology, be rethought as a circular, low-emissions system? Recently completed, TRÆ is now recognized as the nation’s tallest timber structure, with mass timber at the heart of a broader experiment in material reuse and construction logistics across its approximately 3.62-acre development. The project is conceived as a prototype for how dense urban construction might reduce its dependence on carbon-intensive materials. The name is the brief. In Danish, træ means tree, timber, and three. …T1 reaches 256 feet and is joined by two six-story volumes. All are structured with cross-laminated timber (CLT) slabs and glulam columns anchored by concrete cores. The hybrid system balances timber ambition with structural and regulatory demands.

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