Illuminated IceWall Releases Seeds Into Ground to Celebrate MIT’s 150th Anniversary

As part of the <a href="http://arts.mit.edu/arts-blog/fast-installation-icewall/" target="_blank">Festival of Arts, Science and Technology</a> earlier this spring at MIT, third-year architecture student <a href="http://yuchan.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Yushiro Okamoto</a> designed and built IceWall, a temporary installation facing the Charles River. Okamoto wanted to create an installation that would be both visually interesting but also leave a lasting legacy after the festival was over. IceWall is a <a href="http://inhabitat.com/electricfied-tron-legacy-inspired-icehotel-suite-in-sweden/">series of frozen blocks</a> embedded with seeds and stacked on top of each other in a curving spine. As winter turned to spring, the wall would melt into the grass leaving seeds behind to germinate and bloom.

Back in January, Okamoto with the help of Kian Yam, froze large blocks of ice in which they embedded flower seeds.

The blocks were then stacked into a long, head-high spine in an open space on MIT's campus near the Charles River.

At night special lighting came on to light up the translucent ice wall casting an icy blue hue on the landscape.

The wall remained standing bearing the elements of more snow, wind, and cold, which eventually transitioned into rain and sun.

At night visitors based by the wall to check out the embedded seeds.

When it was first installed and still cold, the ice remained clear.

Flower seeds embedded into the ice will work their way into the ground and eventually bloom.

As temperatures grew warmer and snow fell, the wall become less transparent.

The wall was created by stacking ice blocks on top of each other in a slightly staggered formation.

Here the wall begins to feel the effects of spring.

As the wall has gradually melted away soaking into the grass below, the seeds come closer and closer to ground, until eventually the ice melted completely away leaving only seeds.

These seeds will work their way into the ground, germinate and bloom later this spring to continue with the celebration of MIT's 150 anniversary.

Okamoto's goal was to build something that would leave a lasting legacy after then installation was over and these spring flowers are certain to achieve that.