浮标石 · 材料设计丨美国

Buoy Stone

Megalithic civilizations held tremendous knowledge surrounding mass and weight. What if we could mine this past knowledge to inform contemporary practice with the tool of gravity? One of the greatest mysteries of Megalithic era construction surrounds transportation from quarry to site. It is thought that the Bluestones of Stonehenge were floated up the river Avon with animal bladders. This practical solution provokes perception in delivering a floating stone. What would it mean to float a stone today? The

Buoy Stone

is calibrated to rest on its side for a horizontal commute, then transform into a vertical figure once pumped full of river water.

The

Buoy Stone

celebrates the 100th anniversary of MIT crossing the Charles River from Boston to Cambridge. It is the second in a series of megaliths that investigate how this knowledge from the past could impact our contemporary world ~ the first being the

McKnelly Megalith

.

Credits

year

: 2016

loca­tion

: Cambridge, MA

site

: Charles River in front of Killian Court, MIT

size

: 8’ X 8’ X 20’

mate­r­ials

: Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete / Water

purpose

: Centennial Celebration of MIT crossing the Charles River

principal

: Brandon Clifford

project leads

: Myung Duk Chung \ Maya Shopova \ Tyler Swingle

computation

: Victor Leung

project team

: Ammar Ahmed \ Borislav Angelov \ Xhulio Binjaku \ John Fechtel \ Daniel Garcia \ Maxwell Jarosz \ Zain Karsan \ Alexander Marshall \ Paul Short