The megaphones are the first-year course project of interior architecture students from the Estonian Academy of Arts, where the students set out to conceptualise the idea of a forest library. Construction took place in August, carried out by nine students in the EAA workshop, in Tallinn. Now the megaphones have been transported to their new home near Pähni Nature Centre in southern Estonia, some 350 kilometres from Tallinn.

The megaphones of the forest library, each with a diameter of three metres, offer passers by some space for their thoughts and spending time by themselves. “The trademark of Estonia is both the abundance of sounds in our forest as well as the silence there,” said Valdur Mikita, a writer and semiotician involved in the project. “In the megaphones, thoughts can be heard. It is a place for browsing the “book of nature,” for listening to and reading the forest through sound,” he explained.

(Photo: Tõnu Tunnel/Riigimets)

According to Marge Rammo, Head of the Nature Management Department at RMK, the megaphones offer shelter for the wanderer, and a less demanding hiker could also spend the night there. “Due to their location near RMK’s Pähni Nature Centre, the megaphones can be used as an exciting outdoor classroom, but they are also suitable for small-scale cultural events,” she said, adding that it is likely that the megaphones will provide an additional incentive to visit the forest, for both Estonians and foreign visitors alike.

More photos of the megaphones in the forest and their transport from Tallinn to Võru County are available here and here.