Escherian Stairwell The video claims that the stairwell, whose name evokes M.C. Escher's impossible objects, was built in the 1960s by the fictitious architect Rafael Nelson Aboganda. The video was revealed to be an Internet hoax, as individuals have travelled to Rochester Institute of Technology to view the staircase.

In reality, the stairs are as flat as a pool table, but shaped just so, with mathematical precision, so that the same drawn-on line intersections appear to be concave from one viewpoint but convex in its mirror-image. Thus the “stairs” go down from one perspective and up from the other.

Round stairs are called either circular stairs or spiral stairs depending on the stair design.