‘le bruit du bois’ makes a pavilion you can play
High above Faverges-Seythenex in the French Alps, a long timber structure cuts across the grassy slope. It is a pavilion, but its architecture comes with a second use. Visitors can pick up a wooden stick and play it. Rows of suspended timber pieces produce a sequence of tones that travels along the structure and out into the valley. Those who have been there recall how its sounds have joined the wind and distant cowbells which already move through the landscape.
Called Le Bruit du Bois, or The Sound of Wood, the fifteen-square-meter installation was designed by Antoine Aunave, Flora Peyrot, Mathilde Steenhaut, and Luc Loviton for the 2026 Festival des Cabanes. The four ENSA Montpellier students won this year’s competition with the proposal, which was selected from close to 200 entries. The festival placed fourteen temporary structures around the Sources du Lac d’Annecy for its eleventh edition.
images © Antoine Aunave
nearly 1,000 timber chimes tune the valley
The idea becomes clearest once someone starts moving along The Sound of Wood pavilion. The timber elements change in length across the structure to give each section a different sound. Running a stick through them sends a progression of tones down the wall. A single gesture turns the whole elevation into something closer to an oversized xylophone, with the surrounding valley acting as its acoustic room.
There are close to 1,000 of these wooden chimes. Fabricating and installing them became a substantial part of the build for the young team, who worked with a group of fellow architecture students to construct the project on site. Their repetition gives the pavilion its visual character too. Seen from a distance, the pieces gather into a thin horizontal band against the steep terrain. Up close, the gaps between them let the landscape remain visible through the wall.
the timber pavilion stretches horizontally across the steep alpine landscape
a slender batten becomes structure and sound
At the center of the design is a timber batten measuring just four centimeters across. The same slender profile is repeated through the pavilion, bending slightly as it rises and responding to the wind with small movements. The architects use this single dimension to build the structure and generate its sound, allowing a straightforward piece of milled timber to do much of the work.
The pavilion sits above the uneven ground on an elevated walkway, with a handrail following one edge. Its asymmetrical frame stretches farther on the north side, guiding the approach before visitors move into the denser field of hanging pieces. Inside, the experience becomes more enclosed. Timber surrounds the body while openings between the chimes keep views toward the mountains and fields in reach.
visitors can play Le Bruit du Bois by moving a wooden stick across its chimes
architecture joins the existing sounds of the alps
Sound gives the cabin a relationship with its setting that a framed view alone could hardly achieve. A visitor can set off a run of wooden tones, then let them fade back into the valley. At other moments, the breeze moves through the slender pieces on its own. The pavilion shifts between something people actively play and something that responds to the weather around it.
It’s especially fitting for Le Festival des Cabanes, an architecture festival built around temporary interventions in the landscape around Lake Annecy. Here, the project asks visitors to listen as much as look. The satisfying part is how little machinery the effect requires. Timber, movement, and the acoustics of an open valley are enough to turn a small cabin into an instrument that can be heard well beyond its footprint.
close to 1,000 timber pieces give the structure its changing sequence of sounds
a four centimeter timber profile repeats throughout the slender structure
Estudio EA