The Shard — skyscraper
Ввласенко · CC BY-SA 3.0

The Shard

  • 2 min read
  • 51.504° N 0.087° W

Interesting facts

  • The tower appeared on screen before it existed: Children of Men, released in 2006 and set in 2027, added it to London's skyline with a model and CGI.
  • The 66 m steel spire was test-assembled on an airfield in North Yorkshire, then dismantled and taken to London for installation.
  • In 2010 the concrete core climbed about 3 m a day, and that November it overtook One Canada Square, ending its 18-year run as Britain's tallest building.
  • Its design was among the first in Britain revised after the official US report on the World Trade Center collapse, and the tower can sway up to 400 mm.
  • A crane erected in September 2011 to lift the spire was, at the time, the tallest ever put up in Britain.
  • It stands higher than every natural hill in London and the surrounding counties; the farthest natural point visible from the top is Walbury Hill, near Wiltshire.
  • During construction more than 20 urban explorers slipped past security to reach the top, and BASE jumpers reportedly leapt from the site over ten times.
  • In September 2012 a team of 40 people abseiled down from the 87th floor to raise money for charity.
  • For all its height, the building holds only 10 residential apartments, set above the hotel near the top of the tower.
  • Mace agreed to build the tower for no more than £350 million in 2007, but within a year the price had risen to almost £435 million.

Why it is worth it

The Shard is a 95-storey glass pyramid rising 309.6 m over London Bridge station, the tallest building in the United Kingdom and in Western Europe. Its architect, Renzo Piano, is said to have sketched the idea on the back of a restaurant menu in Berlin in 2000 when the developer Irvine Sellar asked him to replace a 1970s office block on the site: a spire emerging from the Thames, inspired by the railway lines below, the church steeples in Canaletto's views of London and the masts of sailing ships. English Heritage objected that it would be a shard of glass through the heart of historic London, and the insult became the name.

The building is clad in some 11,000 panes of glass, about 56,000 m² in all, angled so that the surface picks up the colour of the sky and changes with the weather and the time of day. Construction began in March 2009 using top-down methods, digging foundations while the core was already rising, a first in Britain. In 2011 workers found a fox living near the top of the unfinished tower; he was nicknamed Romeo and rehomed. The 500-tonne steel spire was winched into place on 30 March 2012, and the tower was inaugurated that July, in time for the London Olympics. It is largely owned by the State of Qatar.

The tower stacks a small city vertically: a private hospital near the base, offices, three restaurants on floors 31 to 33, the Shangri-La hotel on floors 34 to 52 and apartments above. For most visitors the point is The View from The Shard, opened on 1 February 2013 and the highest viewing gallery in Britain. Its upper level on the 72nd floor, at 244 m, is partly open to the air, and the whole of London is laid out below.

The tower anchors the Shard Quarter, a larger development beside the station and Guy's Hospital, and its sheer glass flanks have tempted climbers: in July 2013 six Greenpeace activists scaled it to protest against Arctic oil drilling. The design won the Emporis Skyscraper Award in 2014, the judges calling it London's new emblem.

Getting there

The Shard stands in Southwark, central London, directly above London Bridge station, served by National Rail and the Underground. London City Airport (LCY) is about 10 km away and Heathrow (LHR) about 26 km.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in England 93The Most Beautiful Places in the United Kingdom 154The Most Striking Skyscrapers Seen on Screen 6The Most Beautiful Buildings Seen on Screen in the United Kingdom 11The Most Striking Skyscrapers 20The Most Beautiful Buildings in England 27The Most Beautiful Film Locations in England 27The Most Beautiful Buildings in the United Kingdom 28The Most Beautiful Film Locations in the United Kingdom 29The Most Beautiful Buildings Seen on Screen 47The Most Beautiful Film Locations 221The Most Beautiful Buildings 286

From the encyclopaedia

The Shard, also referred to as the Shard London Bridge and formerly London Bridge Tower, is a 95-storey mixed-use development supertall pyramid-shaped skyscraper, designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, in Southwark, London, that forms part of The Shard Quarter development. Standing 309.6 metres high, The Shard is the tallest building in the United Kingdom and Western Europe; and the seventh-tallest building in Europe. The Shard replaced Southwark Towers, a 24-storey office block built on the site in 1975.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

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