Woodstock is a name that carries cultural weight. Its first reference is to the music festival that took place in 1969, featuring artists as diverse as Joan Baez, Santana, and Jimi Hendrix (not to mention lots of naked hippies rolling in mud). For some readers, the name may also call to mind the chipper avian fellow who was Snoopy’s sidekick. Woodstock is also a beautiful 1930’s typewriter, a city in New Zealand, and a residential school in the Indian Himalayas. Put aside all of these allusions and prepare yourself for a new Woodstock. Deconstruct the word and you get wood + stock, as in an organic building material in commercial supply, AKA the everyday shipping pallet—an item that is being converted into inventive furniture by the French studio Aparte.

Woodstock Sofa. Designed by Aparte.

Recycled Sofa Saves Space with “Satellites”

Constructed from recycled wood pallets, Woodstock is a sofa that repurposes an everyday object into a space-saving piece of multi-purpose furniture. The idea is two-fold: “waste recovery, as the reduction of living space.” The resulting Woodstock sofa includes a side table, storage, and two ottomans (what Aparte calls “satellites”) that increase seating or provide impromptu tables or footrests. Like a nesting table, the ottomans tuck into the main body of Woodstock.

The sofa offers multiple possibilities. When the satellites are stored, Woodstock leaves more open space in a room, so you don’t need to move coffee tables if you want to play wii or Twister. If you receive unexpected visitors, you can pull out the cleverly camouflaged stools and double your apartment’s seating (they’re upholstered for comfort). Woodstock also provides lots of storage/surface space. The sofa itself has two shelves: one that runs along the side and back of the couch, and another one on the side that forms a niche. As if that weren’t enough room for laptops, cookie plates, and wine glasses, each ottoman has its own shelf below the seat. Which is to say that Woodstock can double as a room divider, bookshelf, display nook, and media cabinet. Besides being composed of recycled material, the sofa saves space—the new Woodstock, as it turns out, also bestows a sense of social harmony.

About the Designer: Aparte is a design studio headquartered in Nantes, France that creates brands, products, websites, and interior spaces. The company is “open to artisans, traders and manufacturers who wish to leave their mark on the market,” although it maintains a core group of five employees: Antoine Gripay, Kevin Blondy, Thibault Chambaudie, Camille Pansard, and Jonathan Ruas.