The 22,000m2 Canaletto residential tower in London employs
the concept of clustering several floors together to
establish a group of ‘vertical communities’.
Canaletto
Residential
Tower
UNStudio
www.unstudio.com
Offering waterside living, the 31-storey tower compris-
es studios, one and two-bedroom apartments, a variety of three
bedrooms and one distinct penthouse with a full rooftop. Can-
aletto also includes shared amenities such as a swimming pool,
health club, media room and resident’s club lounge with a terrace
on the 24th floor
UNStudio’s design for the tower, which is located in the Lon-
don borough of Islington, incorporates the remodeling of the fa-
cade, a streamlining of the building’s mass and a contrasting of
scale and detail untypical of a residential tower. The facade for the
Canaletto tower was designed to emphasise its residential charac-
ter and to define a distinct ‘Islington’ response.
Ben van Berkel: “The City Road Tower distinguishes itself from
buildings in the nearby financial district of the City through vari-
ation; through materials, through clusters, through a scale that is
appropriate to city streets and through a facade that creates its
own residential identity by means of a varied and heterogeneous
elevation.”
Photo Info : Hufton + Crow www.huftonandcrow.com
Eva Bloem www.evabloem.com
Ben van Berkel: ‘In a residential building, we want residents to re-
ally feel like they are part of a unique work of architecture, some-
thing that is identifiably theirs. This is why the design of Canaletto
really emphasises this clustering of different floors – small com-
munities that are visibly unique from other nearby towers.”
In the design near and distant townscape views are enhanced
through scale, detail, and material variation. The proposed build-
ing facade creates a modeled elevation in which clusters of adja-
cent floors are grouped together.