The Shard Conceived from the very beginning as the new star in London´s constantly growing skyline, the tallest 1 building in Europe , Renzo Piano´s building represents both architecture´s optimistic ideals, as well as its deeply grounded relation to capitalism, which our profession seems to be unable to escape. Located in a historically conflictive borough on the South bank of the Thames, opposite to where the tall buildings are grouped together, the London Bridge Tower, which resembles an obelisk, a pyramid, an icicle, 2 a spire or a shard of glass, stands proudly on its own as London´s most recent icon, working since 2012 as an orientating visual reference for people. A simplified geometrical form which intentionally hides the usediversity it bears inside, and instead turns into a monument that wants to impose itself over the city, whether as a sign of the power of London´s rising economy post economic crisis and post 9/11, or as a sign of its technological development, probably both. Reflecting its surroundings with its all-glass facade and seemingly fading into the sky, The Shard appears almost as a nice illusion in the background of the city which only starts to become real when walking through the Southwark streets where it completely contrasts with the low-rise housing estates and Georgian buildings that have been there for decades. It is not only a contrast in terms of shapes or materials, in the new against the old or in the evidently different scales and proportions, which are all oppositions that are inherent to our historical time and may be used to enrich our architectural legacy; it is a deeper contrast, one that takes a while to determine when thinking that it is only its overwhelming height that intrigues. Taking into consideration the initial idea for such a development, which brought into the same equation the UK government, a 3 millionaire , a world-known Italian architect and later on the Qatari investors who currently own the majority of the property, the discourse of the project seems to lay in the regeneration of an urban area through the city´s policy to promote high-density developments around 4 key transportation nodes . If this building is supposed to regenerate this area, why does it feel like such an outsider? In Sellar´s view, (which is shared by Piano) this project is “not so
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The Shard, held this title, for only a few months before “Mercury City” building in Moscow reached 339 metres of height. Today, The Shard is the fifth in the list of the tallest building in Europe, while the first four are all in Moscow. In relation to the world, The Shard th occupies the 79 place. (http://www.emporis.com/statistics/tallest-buildings/Continent/100001/europe) 2 Piano claims to have taken his inspiration from London´s spires and ship masts as in Canaletto´s paintings. 3 Irvine Sellar is a British businessman and real-estate developer, who was behind the project from the very beginning. 4 Jodidio, Philip. Piano: Complete Works 1966 to today. Koln. Taschen, 2014. P. 535
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much a mixed-use building as a vertical slice of a city, a place where people live, work, enjoy themselves.” If we were to accept this idea, we would have to question what defines a city. Is it only the concentration of various activities in a specific area? Or should we add to it the links between these activities, in this case staircases and elevators? Do we have a city yet? 6
At 310 meters high, with 72 inhabitable floors , the building contains, from top to bottom, a “public” viewing gallery, exclusive apartments, a luxury hotel, high-class restaurants and elegant office spaces that manage to function separately with the help of 44 lifts inside the central structural concrete core. The building´s relation to the ground is an even more complex matter; by taking a highly active transportation hub as the starting point for this tower, it is inevitably immersed in an intense network of intermittent flows which, together with the infrastructure that supports the project, intends to organize and direct. Railways, buses 7 and underground lines converge in this specific spot of the city, where 250,000 travelers go through every day, and Piano´s project efficiently manages to make these networks work. The plaza is where all the different features meet, but it is not a welcoming space, it seems to be merely a transitory area where the building appears as a huge impenetrable world, with security officers in every corner, who will not allow in anyone who does not have a reservation, or in other words, anyone who is not willing to pay a certain amount of money to experience the “attractions”. The project starts to become shameless in its elitist, consumerist intentions, with “The Shard Arcades” leading to the underground station or a 25 pounds ticket to visit its “public” space, while becoming an enclosed “vertical city” that is not relating to the “horizontal city” on which it stands, but completely alienating itself from it an forgetting about those who live in the area it was planning to regenerate. Are urban policies only about mobility and height? What is the point in having high-density buildings that do not take into account the housing crisis but only have 10 luxurious apartments? While rising as an elegant, skinny and photogenic figure worthy of representing the “new” image of London to itself and to the world, the iconic transparent building appears to get less and less transparent the closer you get to it. Section through the London Bridge Quarter, showing the building´s relation to its immediate context.
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Powell, Kenneth. The Shard: The official guidebook. London. Thames & Hudson, 2013. P.15 The building has 95 floors in total.
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Jodidio, Philip. Piano: Complete Works 1966 to today. Koln. Taschen, 2014. P. 535 Powell, Kenneth. The Shard: The official guidebook. London. Thames & Hudson, 2013. P.22
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