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Jill

Rollercoaster staircase

Cory Doctorow at 9:26 am Sat, Nov 26, 2011

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This awesome rollercoasteroid staircase is underway in Germany:

The walkable, large outdoor sculpture Tiger & Turtle – Magic Mountain is currently in construction on the Heinrich Hildebrand Höhe in Duisburg Wanheim (D). It overtops the plateau with the artificially heaped-up mountain by 21m | 23yd so the visitor can rise by more than 45m | 49yd above the level of the landscape and enjoy an impressive view over the Rhine.

Tiger & Turtle – Magic Mountain / Heike Mutter + Ulrich Genth (via Crib Candy)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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  • tylerkaraszewski

    “…walkable…”
    Requesting video of someone walking the loop portion.

  • Chris Lites

    I agree, how can you walk this thing?

  • Holger Lembke

    You can’t. Loops are not walkable, there is a gate barrier.
     
    You can see it just infront the person with the orange cap on the left side. Some pixels left to his cap.

    • Guest

      Oh Yeah, there it is. Good eye, good breakdown. 

  • Matt Fisher

    Do you mean a barrier?  I looked through the gallery and there does seem to be an obstacle right where you describe.  It’s a shame you can’t walk the entire run somehow – I looked for some kind of shortcut between the two lowest parts of the loop, but it appears you will walk halfway, then you will turn around, then you will walk around to the other entrance, and you will walk back to the middle, and you will find it mildly amusing.

  • chijack

    Couldn’t be built in the US – Not ADA compliant.

  • bcsizemo

    They should have built the loops like a mobius strip, where you were walking on the outside at the top, but shift back around to the inside at the bottom…  It wouldn’t have been 100% accurate, but it would have been doable.

  • miasm

    seems like there should be a couple of spiral staircases in there somewhere…

  • neurolux

    I was hoping the stairs at the loop would turn into a ladder, and then monkey bars over the top.

  • Hopeful_Greis

    Just wasted 20 minutes looking at pix and vids trying to figure out how you walk the loop before seeing the barrier just before the fun part. Was ein Schweinerei! At least I won’t waste a day going to Duisburg now as there is nothing else there worth seeing. Like besizemo, I thought there was  a möbius strip there with a short ladder ascent at the twist.

    • samovar100

       Same here :(

  • Graysmith

    As quite obviously evident by all the photos of people walking around on this thing, it’s not currently under construction. It opened to the public on November 13th.

  • Eark_the_Bunny

    M. C. Escher would like this.

  • The Ouroborus

    If that contraption was built in America, it would be a thousand law-suits waiting to happen.

  • FreakCitySF

    I would love to have a crawl space in the loop area.

  • catonpalm

    This calls for the waitress from 2001: A Space Odyssey!

  • Laroquod

    This would be more interesting from a walker’s perspective if the steps turned into a spiral staircase at the vertical part of the loop. However, since it is a work of art… perhaps not being able to walk the complete loop is part of the point.

  • c0mmentat0r

    http://www.latimes.com/travel/deals/la-trb-offbeat-traveler-tiger-and-turtle-magic-mountain-sculpture-20111121,0,5971943.photogallery?index=lat-sculp_loop_luvmsnpd20111121142802
    very definitely a barrier..  too bad, as the trip around the loop looked like the main thing!

  • GawainLavers

    Pulled straight from a recurring nightmare of mine, except there need to be large, open gaps between the steps.