This is crazy. During John Stewart and Steven Colbert’s ‘Rally to Restore Sanity’ event in Washington DC, an escalator in a Metro station went completely buckwild. Like to the shits. I’m not kidding, the escalator started speeding up and tossing people on top of each other. Just watch. The ridiculousness starts around 30 seconds in. More »
For the lazy man, escalators are a godsend. But they’re limited to straight lines or minor curves, which means they can’t go past a certain size before they stop working. Israeli design Michel David has completely changed that by designing the Helixator, a helix-shaped escalator that uses monorail technology to break through height and length barriers. More »
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Half a century ago, it was a real pain in the arse to use the train in London. So they added a “travelator” – not an escalator, mind you, but a climbing, moving walkway. And London was pumped. More »
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Unlike traditional escalators, the Levytator’s steps follows freeform curves which enables it to bend and turn like no escalator can. With the Levytator, it’s no longer just up and down. More »
Star Place is a new Taiwanese department store designed by Dutch architects UNStudio. Outside, the building is beautiful, with a curved façade that glows in a weird star-like moiré pattern. However, the best part of this structure is inside, in its 10-storey atrium, where the designers have constructed a spiral stair made by rotating escalators over a central axis.
Beware the next time your ride an escalator at the mall folks. It appears that they are beginning to stage an organised revolt against their passengers. First an escalator chewed up this poor bastard, then one dished out some payback after some tool disrespected it with a joyride. But that was just a warm up because the escalators appear to be getting bolder. Most recently, a rogue escalator took out 20 passengers in a Tokyo convention centre when it inexplicably started going in reverse.
