Located in Northern Europe, Estonia is roughly half covered in forests. In one corner of the forest, a giant wooden megaphone, large enough for a human to fit inside, suddenly appeared.

The project's central figures are Hannes Praks, head of the Department of Interior Architecture at the Estonian University of Arts, and Aet Ader, a member of the architectural design firm b210. The idea first came about when the two began pondering how to make Estonian forests more interesting. The plan got underway when Aet was invited to give a lecture to a group of first-year students from Hannes's department.

The two and their students initially aimed to create a "library" in the forest. However, about six months into the project, they reached a dead end, with many expressing concern that building a library without a heating system or security system in a humid forest would be too difficult. One of the students, Brijit, then suggested changing the concept from "reading in the forest" to "reading the forest," which led to a major shift in the project's direction.

A total of three megaphones were created and arranged in a triangle. The megaphones, each measuring three meters in diameter, were loaded onto a trailer and transported into the forest. An acoustic engineer was enlisted to ensure that the sounds of the forest could be best heard by standing in the center of the megaphones. "Listening to the sounds of the forest" also means "enjoying silence," and Hannes says, "Through the sounds of nature, I can hear the voice of my own heart, and that's very meaningful." The exhibition opened on September 18th and is free and open to the public.


This article has been translated and written with permission from (Source: http://www.artun.ee/en/).