Carsten Höller installs "largest" of his slides in Mexico City

Artist Carsten Höller has installed the largest-ever version of his architectural slides as part of a development in Mexico City led by local architecture studio Sordo Madaleno.

Mexico City Slides is Höller‘s latest slide installation yet and features four slides ranging from 12 to 38 meters in height and 31 to 90 meters in length.

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The metallic slides with transparent sections cascade around the courtyard of the Antara development in Mexico City’s Polanco neighbourhood, a joint venture between architecture studio Sordo Madaleno and its development arm, SOMA.

It is part of the wider Colonia Granada district.

“Mexico City Slides, which is my largest project with slides so far, connects four different parts of the buildings that make up the new Antara destination,” said Höller.

Its courtyard location, curated by Arte Abierto, is between several buildings containing retail and offices, including an office for technology company Google. A 43-storey tower for a Mexico City Rosewood Hotel is also planned for the site.

The slides take people from various parts of the retail, hospitality and office programming down to a central outdoor landing area.

Höller emphasised the slides’ role in taking people out of their usual routine through a combination of “joy and fear”.

“People sliding from a hotel, from offices, from restaurants and from an art centre are brought together in the air and land next to each other,” said Höller.

“They share the experience of being taken out of their usual form of being, into the unknown, dreamlike territory of simultaneous joy and fear.”

Höller continued, calling the slides “an existential experience of bare life, not unlike a ‘voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind'”.

The artist has designed multiple of these slides across the world. These include installations in a Florentine palazzo, woven through the Anish Kapoor-designed ArcelorMittal Orbit in London and, with a tower, at Vitra campus.