Lightshow Onto Castle

Andreas Paepcke

September 11, 2025

Lightshow Palace — The baroque 18th C. Karlsruhe palace turns into a video screen

Note: double-click on images for details.

For a month in the summer, the above palace serves as canvas for elaborate, animated 3D video projections set to music.The videos take the particular architecture into account, enabling the illusion of transforming the structure. The façade is 17m high, and 170m wide. That width is a football field and a half. The height is a five-story building.

Notice how the top of the building is invisible in some of these images. The effect is achieved by projected black (rgb(0,0,0)) onto the ‘canvas’. The projection must be calibrated precisely to the building's geometry.

Illusion of building decomposing — Illusion of physical structure decomposing

Piston projection — Technology mixin with baroque architecture