Wood Works. Symphony of the Forest
The exhibition “Wood Works – There is a forest in my backyard but my house is built from trees grown far away” explores the entire life cycle of wood as a building material — from felling and transport, through standardisation and construction use, to eventual disassembly, reuse or recycling. It was curated jointly by an Estonian–Irish team: Irish studio Alder Architects (Dublin) and Estonian studio b210 Architects (Tallinn).
The chosen exhibiting architects were: Creatomus Solutions, Hannigan Cooke Architects, Joseph Mackey Architects, Kaja Pae and Paco Ulman, OGU Architects, Peeter Pere Architects, Robert Bourke Architects, Ruumiringlus, Studio Kuidas, and Wrkshop.
The show first opened at Solstice Arts Centre (January–March 2022) and later travelled to Estonia, where it was exhibited at Põhjala Tehas as part of Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2022 (from 8 September 2022). The concept behind the exhibition — born during the COVID-19 pandemic — was initiated via an international call for curators in 2020, organised by Estonian Association of Architects and Estonian Centre for Architecture and the Irish Architecture Foundation. By engaging five Irish and five Estonian architectural practices — each pair working together — the exhibition asked: instead of forcing wood into industrialised, standardised building elements, how might the building and construction industries learn from wood’s natural, variable qualities and treat it as a unique material with history and identity?
“Symphony of the Forest” by Peeter Pere Architects, created in collaboration with composers Tuulikki Bartosik and Sander Mölder, is an immersive sound-spatial installation that interprets the forest as a sacred, living architecture. The work begins from the idea that a forest resembles a cathedral — a vast, intelligent ecosystem where an invisible communication network, the Wood Wide Web, carries the rhythms of life.
By recording and transforming natural sounds through accordion, prepared instruments and field recordings, the artists translate the forest’s own voice into a layered musical composition. Distributed through speakers in space, these sounds evoke treetops, undergrowth, roots, seasons and weather, forming a multidimensional soundscape that shifts between day and night, growth and hibernation, harmony and human impact.
The installation reminds us that the forest is not only a resource but a refuge, source of creativity and a fragile ecological partner. Through sound, the work makes audible the values and sensitivities that define the forest’s spirit — inviting visitors to listen, reflect and reconnect with the living environment that sustains us.
The Estonian-Irish collaborative exhibition won an AAI Award (Architectural Association of Ireland Award).
