New high-rise Canaletto launch party lights up London’s City Road

Hundreds of guests gathered last night at the site of the new Canaletto development on City Road, London, to witness a spectacular light and sound show to celebrate the launch of what is already being described as London’s first beautiful high-rise residential building.

The dynamic 4D show, designed by Slice and Drive Productions, utilised state-of-the-art technology to project a sequence of breathtaking three-dimensional visuals onto the unfinished high-rise building. This world-first event uses the technology to project the future of a development, bringing together the culture, lifestyle and exceptional architecture of this exciting newcomer to the London skyline.

Reflected in the water of nearby Regent’s Canal, the show incorporated aquatic sequences within the projected imagery as the building became a shimmering canvas of digital art and design, befitting of Canaletto’s prime location beside the City Road basin.

Canaletto has been designed by renowned Dutch architect Professor Ben van Berkel, founder of Amsterdam-based UNStudio. It is UNStudio’s first major project in the UK. The architect is best known for the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Raffles City in Hangzhou, Scotts Tower in Singapore and the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam. The tower is designed with a unique curving facade of aluminium and glass that breaks the volume into a series of three-to-five-storey clusters.

Currently standing at just six storeys high, the beautiful new residential tower will grow into the London skyline over the next two years, topping out at 31 storeys. It will contain 190 apartments, ranging from studios to three bedroom units and a penthouse.

City Road is undergoing radical change on the back of sustained commercial and residential development in the nearby Silicon Roundabout community. In the last three years the number of tech companies in East London has risen from 200 to 1,300.

About 48,000 people are employed in the tech cluster with plans for a further 70,000 jobs to be created. The government has pledged £50m to transform the Old Street roundabout into the biggest indoor civic space in Europe with support for entrepreneurs and tech start-ups.

Michelin-starred chef Jason Atherton was on hand to deliver a bespoke menu of food and drink crafted especially for the launch.

The site, sitting at the crossroads between London’s burgeoning creative and technology communities, was temporarily imbued with the kind of life and energy that will come to epitomise the area in years to follow.

The stunning show combined architectural motifs of the Canaletto building with the lifestyle of the prospective community, bringing the brand to life through visionary projection mapping techniques and offering audiences a glimpse into the future.

Slice worked with Mission and Drive Productions to design a spectacular show, producing an immersive environment by integrating animation, sound design, projection and lighting.

The editorial unit