If an elevator and a staircase had a baby, what do you think it would look like? A set of floating steps? No, it would probably be this monstrosity.
Welcome to Vertical Walking: a strange type of upward swimming manoeuvre aided by a system of nightmares. Created by a team of Dutch designers from the Rombaut Frieling Lab in Eindhoven, the contraption uses a pulley system, springs and elastic rope that allows users to manually ascend or descend with only 10 percent of the energy they’d use to climb a flight of stairs.
As an added environmental bonus, the machine requires zero power to operate, unlike power-hungry lifts. While these certainly aren’t going to replace the latter, they could be installed as an interesting alternative to taking the stairs. It does looks tiring as fuck, but according to its creators, it’s a piece of piss to use.
