Dizzying spiral escalators that swirl skywards for an astonishing seven stories have been unveiled at a Chinese shopping mall.
Two of the majestic moving stairways have been installed at the New World Daimaru Department Store in Shanghai, reports Gizmodo.
Japanese company Mitsubishi Electric created the automatic people movers that now dominate the venue’s central atrium.
Each spiral staircase is made from six curved escalators.
Only 103 such flights of electric stairs currently exist in the world, including one at Caesars Palace Forum Shops in Las Vegas.
But the New World Daimaru effort is believed to the largest ever constructed.
It comes after a 57-story skyscraper was built in China in just 19 days.
A Mitsubishi Electric spokesman said that the process of creating the curved escalator was “incredibly difficult.”
As horizontal speed decreases as it moves along the slope, it means that circular designs are “impractical.”
Company engineers solved the issue by, according to Gizmodo, “shifting the center of the circle around which the escalator rotates in response to the degree of gradient.”
This, they claimed, would “realize smooth rotational movement in perfect harmony with vertical movement.”
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