You can now buy tickets for the world’s tallest and longest tunnel slide at London’s ArcelorMittal Orbit Tower.
Artist Carsten Höller – developing on an initial proposal by Bblur Architecture – has designed the 178m-long helter skelter, set to open on 24 June. The slide is the latest intervention to the 115m-tall Orbit, conceived by Anish Kapoor for the 2012 Olympics, following an abseiling attraction completed last year.
‘Since 1999, I have built a number of slides, both free-standing and attached to buildings, but never onto another artwork as in this case,’ says Höller, who installed a pair of spiralling slides at the Hayward Gallery for an exhibition last summer.
‘Now that the two artworks will be intertwined with each other, I see it as one of these double situations that I am so interested in.’
The Orbit Tower slide will be made up of 30 sections – 12 of which are now complete – and feature 12 turns, including a tight corkscrew twist. It starts at a height of 74 metres and has a top speed of 15 miles per hour, taking 40 seconds to go down.
Tickets for the attraction cost £15 and include access to the Orbit’s viewing platform.
London isn’t the only city expecting a helter skelter either, with plans afoot for a glass slide 1,000 ft up Downtown LA’s US Bank Tower.
