You can’t beat the sound of the woods: birds chirping, wind flowing through the trees, the flow of a nearby stream. This team of Estonian architecture students loved the sounds of the forest so much, they constructed a giant wooden megaphone that not only looks incredible, but also amplifies the natural sounds of the forest.

“The inspiration behind this project was the curiosity to really hear what the forest has to say to us, and to see if is it possible to make an ‘audio library’ of those sounds,” explains second year interior architecture student Birgit Õigus. “It made designing in unusual environments interesting to me.”

The team wanted to ensure the installation was accessible for hikers and nature lovers for free, with the objects placed at certain angles that cause the megaphone to gather a sound feed from all three directions. “We wanted to create a different point of view to the regular ‘library-with-the-books’ — bringing features into the forest that people wouldn’t normally pay much attention to,” continues fellow second year student Johanna Sepp.

With their school building located in the middle of the Tallinn’s medieval Old Town, many of the streets are incredibly narrow, causing the transportation of the megaphone to be just a little bit difficult. 

“Every detail of the megaphones is handmade, and the structure is not that easy,” continues Sepp. “The woodwork was a bit intimidating, but it was a good kind of fear. Were all the parts going to fit and match in the end?”

Sepp concludes: “It gave us the perspective to think not only about the idea, but how everything actually works and is put together.”

(Photography © Tõnu Tunnel & Henno Luts)