BRITAIN’S biggest slide will be unveiled tomorrow — not at a theme park or fun fair but inside the Tate Modern art gallery.

Visitors, sitting in canvas sacks, will swoop down from the fifth floor, accelerating to 30mph as they head for the ground floor.

The vast interior of the turbine hall exhibition space, normally the location for avant garde art installations, will be transformed into a giant playground, crisscrossed in three dimensions with five slides.

The giant structures are the brainchild of Carsten Höller, a Belgian-born conceptual artist, who lives in Germany. For him, slides are a fusion of art and architecture that could enliven the cityscape of the future.

He has drawn up a fantasy scheme in which MPs would hurtle from their offices into the chamber of the House of Commons, and shoppers in Oxford Street could glide from a department store till to the ticket barrier of the Underground.

Last week Höller conducted a “test drive” of the highest slide, which is 170ft long and has a drop of 80ft. “I was wary and a bit worried beforehand, but felt completely exhilarated as I came down,” he said. “It took me about 20 seconds. It began rather slowly but then really picked up speed. I loved it.

“Going down can be like being under the influence of a drug — a thrilling experience, but it is also a fast and efficient way of getting from A to B,” said Höller. “It is a playground for the body and the brain. It’s art and it’s not art.”

He maintains that sliding, like skiing, can help people who suffer from depression and mental health problems. A feasibility study commissioned by Höller also concludes that sliding triggers the production of antibodies and helps combat stress.

The installations are the latest in a series sponsored by Unilever to fill the turbine hall. Others have included Anish Kapoor’s gigantic trumpet-shaped sculpture, Rachel Whiteread’s white boxes and Olafur Eliasson’s weather project with its amazing sun.

Made of stainless steel and polycarbonate acrylic glass, the slides will be partly enclosed for safety, but it will be possible to see through the glass for most of the journey. Only one person at a time will be allowed to use the slide and “rides” will probably have to be booked.

The Tate’s helter-skelters will reinvent a fairground attraction that had its heyday in the last century, but was largely superseded by the rise of the rollercoaster, at theme parks such as Thorpe Park, near Chertsey, Surrey, and Alton Towers in the east Midlands.

Margate, the home town of Tracey Emin, the artist famous for exhibiting her dirty bed, has a 70-year-old helter-skelter in its Dreamland fun park, and she made a 20ft version as the centrepiece of one of her exhibitions.

By comparison, the highest waterfall slide at Disney’s Blizzard Beach in Orlando has a 120ft drop while the Cresta Run in Switzerland, used by tobogganists, has a 514ft drop over three-quarters of a mile in length. Top speeds there are about 80mph.

“You can look at my slides for purely sculptural reasons or you can jump on and get sliding,” said Höller, who has over the past few years installed six other slides in Europe. Just two of them are still up, one in Berlin and the other at the headquarters of Prada, the fashion company, in Milan. Miuccia Prada uses hers to get from her office to the ground floor.

It is a fashionable combination of slate grey and stainless steel and can deliver her straight from her office to her chauffeur-driven car. “I think she can also get rid of unwanted staff by throwing them down it too,” joked Höller.

The attraction is only intended to remain in service for six months, until April, but there may be a demand for it to become a permanent fixture on the south bank of the Thames. The nearby London Eye was originally intended to be a temporary structure, but is now one of the capital’s most popular tourist attractions.

Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate, recently announced plans for a £215m extension for Tate Modern, with a glass structure inspired by the zigurrats of ancient Babylon.

The giant pyramid-shaped jumble of boxes will rise to 252ft, towering over the existing gallery, housed in Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s former Bankside power station.

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