<em>Lookout Tower Kelčský Javorník</em>

When we set out for the first time to explore the summit of Kelčský Javorník in early April 2012, the Hostýn Hills were shrouded in dense, damp fog, and the nature here had not yet taken spring into account, which had long since awakened in the lowlands. The beautiful views promised by the official website of the municipality of Rajnochovice on a nice day therefore remained hidden from us, but the prevailing weather lent our journey from Tesák to Kelčský Javorník an extraordinary charm, and we began to think of the lookout tower as part of the trip, a milestone emerging from the fog just as the stones, trees, and rocks gradually revealed themselves to us and then disappeared again.
Fourteen days later, we headed back to the Hostýn Hills. This time, we chose a route from Rajnochovice. However, the situation repeated itself, and although it was beautifully sunny the whole way from our town, the Hostýn Hills were once again enveloped in fog. A cold wind and icy drizzle had also set in. As if it had never been any other way, or as if one had to earn those distant views somehow. Perhaps by building a lookout tower.

Architecture
The fact that the site for the new observation tower is located in a clearing by the road, a few dozen meters from the actual summit of Kelčský Javorník (beyond the protective zone of the triangulation point), in close proximity to tall trees, led us to search for a specific form that embraces natural shapes without directly imitating them.
The lookout tower is designed as a tower-like structure with a circular floor plan, whose construction combines larch wood and hot-dip galvanized steel. Twelve arching larch slats are arranged in a circle around a steel column, forming the spindle of the spiral staircase, into the shape of a slender truncated ellipsoid, and together they support the viewing platforms.
You can enter the space of the lookout tower from anywhere, just walk through, or smoothly ascend upwards in the direction of the clock hands. The absence of surrounding walls ensures continuous visual contact with the surroundings.
Every eleventh step alternates between a stop with a view. There are eleven such stops in the form of stair landings pulled from the central staircase between the outer slats, always occupying one of twelve floor segments. The twelfth stop is a covered circular platform with a view between the slats. An uninterrupted panoramic view is provided by the open viewing platform at the top of the tower.

Construction and Technology
A combination of twelve glued wooden slats with a central steel column, braced horizontally and vertically with prestressed rod ties, founded on a reinforced concrete base anchored in the bedrock with 4 micropiles. The source for the pair of aviation light beacons is an island power supply system consisting of six photovoltaic panels, a distribution box with a regulator, and gel batteries located in the shaft of the tower's foundation.