The Shard began as a sketch on the back of a restaurant menu
Over lunch in Berlin in 2000, architect Renzo Piano told developer Irvine Sellar how much he disliked conventional tall buildings, then turned over the menu and sketched something different. That doodle grew into the Shard, a glass pyramid 309.6 metres tall and the highest building in the United Kingdom and Western Europe.
Sellar had set out in 1998 to replace Southwark Towers, a 1970s block by London Bridge, after a government paper encouraged tall buildings at transport hubs. Piano imagined a spire rising from the Thames, inspired by the neighbouring railway lines, the London church spires in Canaletto's paintings and the masts of sailing ships. English Heritage hated it, likening it to a glass shard stabbed into the old city's heart, and in doing so handed the tower its name. A planning inquiry followed, and in November 2003 the government approved it as a design of the highest quality.
Money nearly killed it. Market turmoil in late 2007 threatened the project, and the builder's fixed price of £350 million crept towards £435 million. In January 2008 a consortium of Qatari investors paid £150 million for an 80% stake, and Southwark Towers came down that year.
Construction, which began in March 2009, used top-down methods new to Britain, digging foundations while the core rose above. At its fastest the concrete core climbed about 3 metres a day, reaching the 72nd floor at 244 metres in early 2011. The design had also been revised after the collapse of New York's World Trade Center to stay stable under extreme conditions. On 30 March 2012 a 66-metre, 500-tonne spire was winched into place, and the last 516 panes of glass brought it to full height.
The Prime Minister of Qatar inaugurated it on 5 July 2012, just ahead of the London Olympics. It has 72 habitable floors, an open-air viewing deck on the top one, and a gas-fired combined heat and power plant that recycles engine heat for hot water. In 2014 it won the Emporis Skyscraper Award, whose judges called it London's new emblem.
Source: The Shard
