Who says you have to be a kid to enjoy a good indoor slide now and again? Scott Jones, for one, had the above stairs-and-slide combination custom carved from mahogany – and clearly made sure the craftsmen checked for slivers. But he is not the only one: from children-friendly variants to in-office versions, stair slides have made a strange sort of comeback in these five recent construction projects.

London architect Alex Michaelis has also constructed a slide side-by-side with his dream-home staircase – though in this case it clearly is for the kids to enjoy more than for the adults, and the synthetic material is less prone to be a pain in your, well, you know.

It seems as if this designer managed to fuse the fun and functional aspects of both of the previous examples, constructing a more simplified and child-sized wooden slide – a toned-down variation on the eccentric entrepreneur’s one featured first, or a souped-up spiral variant of the straight-and-narrow one pictured second.

However, who would expect to find not only a bright orange slide by a fireman’s pole smack dab in the middle of an otherwise austere Toronto office building lobby by Johnson Chou? Yes, workers on their way out can exit by these or the more boring staircase if they wish.

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There is no reason to limit these design ideas to interior spaces, as this outdoor metal variant illustrates – sliding is a much more fun (and fast) way from the top of a staircase to the bottom anyway. Caution, slippery when wet?!