The "When I Was Four, I Burned My Ass on a Portable Gas Heater" stool
2026 / 300x300x450 mm
Transience and Value
Designed, constructed, and produced for a brief, fleeting moment. Artifacts of this kind surround us every day: disposable products, knick-knacks, cheap junk. Objects to which we seem to assign only little value.
Are these things therefore poorly designed? Are they truly worthless, or do they only lose their value once they have fulfilled their function? Is the moment of their devaluation more significant than the object itself?
From Matchstick to Furniture
My stool takes up these questions. It translates the image of an everyday, fleeting object—the matchstick—into a new scale and a new function. An object that seems to have been created for a single moment becomes a piece of furniture that endures.
The contrast between transience and permanence opens up a reflection on value. Is value created through material, through lifespan, or through the meaning we assign to an object? What kind of appreciation do things receive in our everyday lives, and who determines their value in the first place? What role does design play in this? Can design change the value of an object, or does it merely make that value visible?
