Project Description
FROM QUEEN ELIZABETH OLYMPIC PARK:
Measuring 178m, The Slide will be the world’s tallest and longest tunnel slide. People will be able to travel down the UK’s tallest public artwork through light and dark sections as London’s dramatic skyscape passes by. The Slide will twist and turn 12 times, including a tight corkscrew section named the ‘bettfeder’ – after the German word for ‘bedspring.’ The Slide ends with a 50 metre straight run to the ground. In the exhilarating 40-second trip, riders are expected to hit speeds of up to 15 miles per hour.
The Slide is made up of 30 sections, each measuring between five and nine metres long. The Slide is being lifted into place by a team of specialist abseilers, using a complex procedure involving ropes and pulleys that’s been specially designed for this construction project.
Anish Kapoor, said, “I am delighted that my work, the ArcelorMittal Orbit at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park is the site for a collaboration with Carsten Höller. I believe it will result in the making of a new work which will bring two works of art together in an ambitious way.”
Carsten Höller, said: “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. 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. I like it when a sense of unity is reached in two separate entities, and you can find this thought to repeatedly occur in my work.”
Read ARCHITECT’s feature from last year on Carsten Höller’s giant slides at the Hayward Gallery here.
The Slide was designed by artist Carsten Höller at the invitation of Anish Kapoor, who designed the ArcelorMittal Orbit with engineer Cecil Balmond for The London 2012 Summer Olympics.