Anything but down to earth

A faux street up in the heady heights of a heaven of consumption. The Langham Place spiral is a unique architectural feature that lends a street like quality to a shopping mall, hundreds of feet in the air.

We're all used to staircases running through buildings, turning back and forth at every half floor height. What if they turned at every quarter of a floor height, and instead of turning back and forth they turned sideways in a loop. Now, in addition, what if the entire floor was built only in quarters ... one quarter for each level of the staircase. So you walk along, say, the 10th floor (of which only a quarter exists) and you descend a quarter of a level and again walk a quarter floor, until you reach the stairs again, and can again descend partially. Thereby one descends each floor in four stages by simply walking along four quarters of the floor from which one is descending. That's the spiral. Let me know if this sounds complicated - I'll go back and get pictures.

The shops are mostly speciality stores - boutiques, toys, bakery, jewellery, a few restaurants, an ice cream place and such. Easiest way to do the spiral is to take the escalator to the very top and walk down as you shop. A street inside a building - climate-controlled, crowd-controlled, private public space. Okay, I detect the cynic raising his head. Better sign out. It really really is a nice place though. Very pleasant to walk around, innovative - a new take on take on the mall.