Silence Amplifier
Location: Zaube, Latvia
Type: Hospitality
Year: 2018
Project developed in collaboration with Matthias Kimmel.
The silence of the forest. Is it sound, or just silence? What if it could be amplified?
The Silence Amplifier is a forest cabin that is able to augment the impressions of nature, allowing guests to meditate in a natural, yet sheltered environment. The goal of the design serves two purposes: on the one hand, the cabin shall enhance the guest’s ability to meditate in a living environment.
Instead of simply creating a building, we are proposing to create an architectural organism that is able to collect the silence of the forest, channel it and provide it to the person in the cabin in an amplified and customisable manner.
The cabin’s shape softly merges into the forest ground with minimal disturbance of the natural surroundings. Following the ideal to return to the forest what has been taken from it, the cabin’s living roof serves as an extension of the forest bed, allowing forest vegetation to grow on it.
The cabin is able to operate fully self-sufficiently. Using local and regional timber, a high-thermal-inertia firewood stove provides energy for heating and cooking. During night time hours, low-energy LED lights, powered by a battery, provide sufficient lighting for reading and other activities in the cabin.
