Four giant, intertwining spiral slides — the tallest reaching 38.5 meters, or about 126 feet — have been installed at Mexico City’s upscale Antara shopping center by Carsten Höller, a Belgian-born sculptor known for his interactive works.
Touted as a permanent feature, “Mexico City Slides” is part of a big expansion at the 20-year-old Polanco-adjacent shopping center located in Colonia Granada.
Made of steel and polycarbonate, the slides range from about 12 to 38.5 meters tall, with slide lengths of about 32 to 91 meters.
Each slide carries an individual rider, allowing four people to descend simultaneously from different starting points before reaching a common landing area.
According to ARTnews, riders will enter the slides from a restaurant area, Google’s offices, the future Rosewood hotel and a new exhibition space for Arte Abierto. Rosewood lists 2028 for the hotel’s planned opening in the tower of Antara’s expansion.
Right now, the slides are available to view, but Arte Abierto — a contemporary art nonprofit with sites in Cabo San Lucas and elsewhere — has not specified on its website when visitors can begin riding them. It advises checking Instagram for updates.
Arte Abierto and developer SOMA commissioned the installation in collaboration with the architecture firm Sordo Madaleno, according to the online magazine Designboom. The firm also designed the recently opened St. Regis Costa Mujeres resort in Quintana Roo.
The slides accompany an expansion of Antara, which opened in 2006 on a former industrial site. The open-air mall’s current lineup includes stores such as Carolina Herrera, Hugo Boss, Apple and Zara.
Höller, born in Brussels to German parents, trained as a scientist before becoming a full-time artist in 1993. He earned a doctorate in agricultural science at the University of Kiel in 1988 and worked as an insect researcher, according to a biography by the international art gallery Gagosian.
He began his slide series at the 1998 Berlin Biennale. Later installations included five slides inside London’s Tate Modern in 2006 and projects in New York, Florence and Copenhagen.
Arte Abierto calls the Mexico City version Höller’s largest slide installation to date.
“Sliding is a way of thinking through the body,” Höller, 64, says on Instagram. “It is a controlled fall that opens a space between fear and pleasure, where the mind momentarily reorganizes itself.”
With reports from Designboom, Radio Fórmula, ARTnews.com and Lado.mx
