PARADOX STOOL

I visited the Harvard Art Museums in winter 2023 and came across Max Bill’s sculpture titled “Endless Surface in the Form of a Column.” Bill created a puzzling structure by splitting, twisting, and reuniting a long column, illustrating how cumulative subtle changes can shift a surface, despite being inconspicuous when we focus on only a small section. I take Bill’s sculpture to be an illustration of the sorites paradox.

This understanding of Bill’s sculpture inspired me to design the “Paradox Stool,” a sturdy 3D-printed stool with a neat appearance, in which its seat utterly transforms into its feet via a series of apparently insignificant subtle changes.