Le Bruit du Bois 2026: Alpine Timber Sound Pavilion

High above Faverges-Seythenex in the French Alps, a linear timber structure cuts across the sloping grass to serve as a pavilion with an interactive secondary purpose. Visitors can pick up a wooden stick to activate rows of suspended timber pieces, producing a sequence of tones that travels along the structure and echoes into the valley, mingling with the wind and distant cowbells.

Named Le Bruit du Bois, or The Sound of Wood, the 15-square-meter installation was designed by Antoine Aunave, Flora Peyrot, Mathilde Steenhaut, and Luc Loviton. The four ENSA Montpellier students won this year's competition with their proposal, selected from nearly 200 entries for the eleventh edition of the festival, which placed fourteen temporary structures around the Sources du Lac d'Annecy.

Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event

The concept becomes tangible as visitors move along the pavilion. Timber elements vary in length across the structure, giving each section a unique acoustic pitch. Running a stick through them triggers a progression of tones down the wall, transforming the entire elevation into an oversized xylophone set against the natural acoustics of the surrounding valley.

At the core of the design is a slender timber batten measuring just four centimeters across, repeated throughout the pavilion to bend slightly and respond to the wind. The young architects collaborated with fellow architecture students to fabricate and install the project entirely on-site, relying on simple milled timber to fulfill structural and acoustic roles simultaneously.