Skyslide Panoramic Views Over Los Angeles

Rollercoasters, high speed cars or snow-sports aside, have you ever enjoyed an inverted-outside slide that runs 1000 feet above a busy and expansive city? We thought not, but daredevils now can with the Skyslide now formally open in Los Angeles (USA). Found high upon the 72-storey high US Bank Tower that boasts being California's tallest structure, you can now enjoy panoramic views of the city as you descend this transparent slide (...if you're not screaming / full of joy that is).

A modest 14 metres long, the slide connects floor numbers 70 and 69 of the building, and there really is little more than 32 millimetre thick glass panels and a cantilevered support frame that hangs itself off the tower to prevent you from free-falling into downtown Los Angeles. Despite being relatively short, the true enjoyment comes from its airiness, and as the see-through slide emerges from a regular window in the tower's facade before curving down the side of the tower to finish on an open-air roof deck, you really do get the initial sense of jumping out of the building. Taking just a few seconds to travel, the adrenaline, SATORI & SCOUT are told, is quite surprising and 'really something'.

A vast contrast to the giant slide that Anish Kapoor designed at the ArcelorMittal Orbit in London (UK), both are equally really quite awesome. Whilst one is perhaps solely aimed at tourists, SATORI & SCOUT can't help but imagine office workers using the slide to reach the cafeteria to get their coffee fix. Despite such imagination, the Pei Cobb Freed & Partners designed slide is actually part of a new tourist destination that provides 360-degree panoramic views of the city and is complete with event spaces and interactive exhibits, and so unfortunately no office workers will be present. The developers of the slide, OUE (who also own the building as of 2013), describe the design as a "...thrill experience unlike any other".

Photography credit : Pcf-P.com