Chongqing- They say in ancient times, people would go deep into the mountains and forests to find a tree hole, scream their long-kept secrets into the hole, and then seal it with some mud. They believe in this way, and their secrets will stay there forever. Nowadays, everybody needs some kind of a tree hole to reveal our secrets to and to get a break from the mounting pressures of modern life.

The exterior of "Whisper of the Forest" looks like a peanut-shaped fluffy rabbit without ears—courtesy of the interviewee.

That’s exactly where the team from Chongqing University’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning took inspirations from for their “Whisper of the Forest” project, which won the first prize at the recently concluded 2020 Chengdu Park City International Festival & the 3^rd BFU International Garden-making Festival.

Nearly 2,000 individual designers and landscape major students from a total of 101 domestic universities and institutes participated in the event. Only 17 pieces of work made their way out of the total 241 entries. The team behind “Whisper of the Forest” are eight landscape major graduate students and two instructors from Chongqing University.

There is a wide opening on the side and a narrow one on the ceiling.

The project is a 4m x 4m x 3m peanut-shaped bamboo basket with a wide opening on the bigger grain shell side and a narrow opening on the ceiling of the smaller grain shell. Interestingly, quite a few festival participants thought that its exterior looked like a bird’s nest, a rabbit, and even a squirrel.

Luo Dan, one of the project instructors, told reporters that the original design for the project was to use the trunks of two parallel-standing trees and their branches and twigs to form an oval-shaped capsule with a dome. But they soon came up with a much better design, “we took a trail-blazing path by using bamboo strips to weave together the main structure and then decorated with bamboo twigs and leaves,” which, as a whole, looks like a fluffy giant rabbit sleeping quietly in the woods.

A baby girl model plays with herself at the opening of the bamboo basket structure.

To better introduce the design philosophy and concept of their work, the team made a four-minute video featuring a protagonist called Mr. Rabbit, who lives in the city and is under a lot of pressure. In the story, when Mr. Rabbit accidentally came across another happy rabbit who lives in a tree hole in his dream, he shared all his long-kept secrets with his newfound confidant in the safe zone and felt much better about his life and future. But as Mr. Rabbit left that tree hole, he suddenly realized that the happy rabbit wasn’t just some random stranger, but his past self.

“And that’s the idea we are trying to project onto this ‘Whisper of the Forest’ project,” said Luo. “Visitors should be able to rest, communicate, share, and meditate as freely as possible in this safe zone we created.”

Currently, “Whisper of the Forest” is being exhibited at the Guixi Park in Chengdu, Sichuan, and will last till the end of this month.