For the 2012 Canada Blooms Garden Festival, Toronto-based landscape design firm b sq. Design Studio turned 105 standard-sized (48” long x 40” wide x 5” tall) pallets into a garden area featuring planter boxes planted with herbs, a water feature, and a 12-foot-tall playhouse with a “roof deck.”
Recycled wood pallets were chosen as the primary material for this feature garden as they were a commonly available material that everyone recognizes but only as an industrial object. Our challenge was to take this common element and make it into something beautiful and interesting that could be dismantled after the show and then returned into the commercial market once again to function as shipping pallets.
For more new uses for pallets, check out the archive here.
What do you get when you add a pallet to a pair of bike racks on a street?
“Urban hacktivist” Florian Riviere recently showed Berliners that a pallet placed on bike racks makes a functional bench.
Florian’s previous pallet “hacktions” (a.k.a. urban interventions) include placing Ikea-like furniture-building instruction sheets on pallets on Strasbourg streets, to give passersby an idea of what they could make from pallets; check out his project photos here.
And in Paris, he’s turned a pallet into a sidewalk “free library.”
Related:
We’re fans of free book exchanges, like the Little Free Libraries; the now-defunct-phone-booths-turned-mini-libraries (here, here, here, here, and here); shelves in London Tube and train stations and in airports that enable travelers to swap books; former newspaper racks; and a 1979 Ford transformed into a bookmobile from which free books are distributed in Buenos Aires, among others, that spring up in public spaces.
(We’re also fond of more traditional libraries that are housed in non-traditional settings like repurposed old buses and historic barns and churches.)
And now in Paris, there’s this communal book exchange sitting atop a tree cage:
Strasbourg-based street artist Florian Rivière is back with a new, neat urban intervention! Last weekend, Rivière installed a little library on a sidewalk near Gare du Nord … .
I don’t know if that’s a pallet or a crate (or both), but I like it!
See a couple of Riviere’s other urban interventions, a.k.a., “hacktions,” here.
(via Urban Hacktivist Launches Street Library — The Pop-Up City)
Today’s pallet fix:
DIY chair out of a shipping pallet.
How-to: Video: DIY Network
[Thanks, Mary Cate B.!]
We often feature examples of palletecture and cargotecture — wood shipping pallets and metal shipping containers repurposed for architectural uses — though seldom come across the two incorporated into one project. One of the few examples involving both types of repurposing can be found in this earlier Unconsumption post about Infiniski’s Manifesto House in Chile.
As you can imagine, I was psyched to learn during my most recent trip to Dallas about the opening of The Foundry, a beer garden in the Oak Cliff neighborhood, which features BOTH palletecture and cargotecture, among other examples of creative reuse.
The Foundry’s stage, designed by Gary Buckner, is constructed from used pallets, and several decommissioned shipping containers furnished with second-hand items serve as lounge areas.
For additional information on The Foundry and attached restaurant Chicken Scratch, see this D Magazine review. From writer Carol Shih: “Just about every piece of furniture and design — from the hanging lamps fashioned out of crates to the wall decor — is a lesson in recycling.”
Well done, isn’t it?
Photos, top to bottom, used with permission from Flickr user Bullneck and Instagram users Megan Smith (@megan_sm on Instagram), Matt Shelley (@mattshelley), Fred Pena (@alfredchingon), and @redondallas. Bottom photo via D Magazine.
How to build a daybed out of pallets.
For tutorial, to DIY, see Prudent Baby.
(spotted on the Young House Love blog here)
Pallets repurposed to contain a compost pile.
Also: Plastic bottles used as planters.
Lots of reuse pictured here!
(photo via The Reuser: A study in reuse archive)
Today’s pallet fix:
Pallets made into a deck with a garden. Bonus: A repurposed barrel!
(via Rue des Relookeurs; spotted on Pinterest here)
Related: Info here and here on adding backing to pallets for use in gardens, plus other DIY tips.
More palletecture — pallets used as building material
Students in the University of Colorado’s design+build studio used pallet wood, 2x4s reclaimed from an old railroad bridge, and various other found and donated materials to construct two pavilions for local non-profit organizations to use for open-air markets and other agricultural and environmental purposes.
The project, completed in 2010, has earned awards from local and state AIA (American Institute of Architects) chapters.
(photos by Nathan Jenkins; via architectural firm Studio H:T, whose principals were involved with the project)
For construction photos, see the design+build studio’s Facebook album here.
Two pallets = instant bike rack
This DIY “pallet bike rack” photo has been making the blogosphere and Pinterest rounds over the past several months. I’ve seen it so many times that I thought we’d already featured it in our extensive group of pallet-related posts; turns out we had not … until now!
Find more Unconsumption bike-related posts here.
(photo via lowtechatmo on Flickr)
Pallets — wall mounted and repurposed as planters. ‘Nuff said.
(photo via Stacy K Floral)
