Architecure Students Build Music Stage From Pallets

Pallets have been used to build sheds, bookcases, coffee tables, picnic tables, lawn furniture, and fences. They’re inexpensive and abundant and made of softwood or hardwood, depending on their intended use. Over a half billion pallets are currently in use in the United States.

Now, architecture students at Portland State University have completed construction of a new stage at the Pickathon music festival grounds. What makes the stage unique is that it was thought out for, and constructed entirely from wooden shipping pallets. Students wanted a new stage but wanted it built from inexpensive materials that might be discarded or recycled in the future. Pallets fall within that material description.

The architecture students are buying the pallets and then selling them back after the music festival concludes. PSU architecture student Adam McSorley said that the pallets were easy to “rent” for the festival.

The stage is made from an estimated 600 pallets. The floor of the stage isn’t made from pallets. It was constructed by a local contractor. The seats that the audience sits on are also entirely made of shipping pallets. The venue can hold an audience of up to 500 people and is called “The Tree Line Stage.”