carsten höller’s mirrored slides spiral down facade of moderna museet in stockholm

artist carsten höller brings an interactive installation, stockholm slides, to moderna museet as an artwork for exhilaration.

kat barandy October 3, 2025 4 min

A spiraling artwork at stockholm’s Moderna Museet

Stockholm Slides, a new large-scale artwork by Carsten Höller, has taken form on the facade of Moderna Museet in the Swedish capital. The installation consists of two spiraling slides that descend from the museum’s rooftop to the street below, turning the building’s outer wall into a site of movement and play. The work officially opens to the public on October 4th, 2025, adding an interactive addition to the museum’s permanent collection.

Höller has built his career on creating interactive works that invite direct participation — he erected a Slide Tower at the Vitra Campus as far back as 2014. His background in scientific research, especially the study of insect communication, informs his approach to art as a process of experiment and response. With Stockholm Slides, he extends this interest into architecture, transforming the museum exterior into a channel for both physical descent and psychological intensity.

stockholm slides carsten höller — Carsten Höller, Stockholm Slides, 2025 | images © My Matson/Moderna Museet

mirrored choreography by carsten höller

Carsten Höller’s two Stockholm Slides are identical in length, 39 meters (128 feet) each, but mirrored in their rotation: one coils clockwise, the other counterclockwise. Together they span a vertical drop of fifteen meters (49 feet) from the roof terrace to Slupskjulsvägen, on the museum’s waterside. This doubling allows two people to ride in tandem, creating what the artist has called a ‘mirrored choreography.’

The physical experience of the slides is tied to architecture as much as to play. As visitors enter at roof level, they confront the building from an unusual vantage, before being carried downwards in a narrow steel spiral that frames glimpses of the city and the harbor. Gravity becomes an architectural force, guiding bodies in parallel arcs along the museum’s surface.

architecture for exhilaration

For Carsten Höller, the Stockholm Slides belong to a lineage of what he terms ‘influential environments.’ These are installations designed to generate specific mental and emotional states by altering spatial perception and the body’s relation to built form. In this case, visitors feel both exhilaration and unease, a controlled surrender to velocity contained within a structural system.

Although only two riders can descend at once, the artwork extends its influence outward. Pedestrians along the waterfront, as well as diners inside the museum restaurant, can witness the bodies rushing by. In this sense, the installation is a performance in which the architecture mediates between the riders, the observers, and the urban setting.