| The Shard | |
|---|---|
 The Shard in April 2015 | |
 | |
| Alternative names | Shard London Bridge |
| Record height | |
| Tallest in Europe from 2011 to 2012[I] | |
| Preceded by | City of Capitals |
| Surpassed by | Mercury City Tower[10] |
| General information | |
| Status | Completed |
| Location | London, England |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Coordinates | 51°30′16″N0°05′11″W / 51.5045°N 0.0865°W /51.5045; -0.0865 |
| Construction started | 16 March 2009 |
| Completed | 5 July 2012 |
| Opening | 1 February 2013 |
| Cost | ~£435,023,452 (contract cost only) |
| Owner | State of Qatar (95%) Sellar Property Group (5%) |
| Height | |
| Architectural | 309.6 m (1,016 ft)[11] |
| Observatory | 244.3 m (802 ft) |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 95 (72 habitable) |
| Floor area | 1,367,784 sq ft (127,071.3 m2)[2][3] |
| Lifts/elevators | 36[12] |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect(s) | Renzo Piano Building Workshop, architects in collaboration withAdamson Associates Architects[1] |
| Developer | Sellar Property Group |
| Structural engineer | WSP Global (structural engineers),Robert Bird Group (concrete temporary works), Ischebeck Titan on most floors 40+ (concrete support) |
| Services engineer | Arup |
| Main contractor | Mace |
| Website | |
| www | |
| References | |
| [4][5][6][7][8][9] | |
The Shard,[a] also referred to as theShard London Bridge[13] and formerlyLondon Bridge Tower,[14] is a 72-storey mixed-use development supertall pyramid-shapedskyscraper, designed by the Italian architectRenzo Piano, inSouthwark,London, that forms part of The Shard Quarter development. Standing 309.6 metres (1,016 feet) high, The Shard is thetallest building in the United Kingdom, theseventh-tallest building inEurope, and the second-tallest outsideRussia behind theVarso Tower inWarsaw, which beats the Shard by less than half a metre.[15] The Shard replacedSouthwark Towers, a 24-storey office block built on the site in 1975.
The Shard's construction began in March 2009; it was topped out on 30 March 2012 and inaugurated on 5 July 2012. Practical completion was achieved in November 2012. The tower's privately operated observation deck,The View from The Shard, was opened to the public on 1 February 2013. The glass-cladpyramidal tower has 72 habitable floors, with a viewing gallery and open-air observation deck on the 72nd floor, at a height of 244 metres (801 ft). The Shard was developed bySellar Property Group on behalf of LBQ Ltd and is jointly owned by Sellar Property (5%) and theState of Qatar (95%).
In 1998, London-based entrepreneurIrvine Sellar and his partners decided to redevelop the 1970s-eraSouthwark Towers following a UK governmentwhite paper encouraging the development of tall buildings at major transport hubs. Sellar flew toBerlin in the spring of 2000 to meet the Italian architectRenzo Piano for lunch. According to Sellar, Piano spoke of his contempt for conventional tall buildings during the meal, before flipping over the restaurant's menu and sketching a spire-like sculpture emerging from theRiver Thames.[16]
In July 2002, theDeputy Prime Minister,John Prescott, ordered a planning inquiry after the development plans for the Shard were opposed by theCommission for Architecture and the Built Environment and several heritage bodies, including theRoyal Parks Foundation andEnglish Heritage.[17][18] The inquiry took place in April and May 2003,[14][19] and on 19 November 2003, theOffice of the Deputy Prime Minister announced that planning consent had been approved.[20] The government stated that:
Mr Prescott would only approve skyscrapers of exceptional design. For a building of this size to be acceptable, the quality of its design is critical. He is satisfied that the proposed tower is of the highest architectural quality.
Sellar and his original partnersCLS Holdings plc and CN Ltd (acting for theHalabi Family Trust) secured an interim funding package of £196 million in September 2006 from theNationwide Building Society andKaupthing Singer & Friedlander. This enabled them to pay off the costs already incurred and to buy out the Southwark Towers occupational lease from the building's tenants,PricewaterhouseCoopers.[21] Vacant possession of the site was secured a year later, after PricewaterhouseCoopers completed the relocation of their operations.
In September 2007, preparations for the demolition of Southwark Towers began.[22] However, later that same month,turbulence in the financial markets reportedly put the Shard's construction in jeopardy,[23] threatening to render the project an example of theSkyscraper Index.
In November 2007, building contractorMace was awarded the contract to build the Shard for a fixed price of no more than £350 million. However, this price increased to almost £435 million in October 2008.[24]
In April 2008, demolition of Southwark Towers was visibly under way,[25] and by October, the building had been substantially reduced in height, and was no longer visible on the skyline. The demolition was completed in early 2009, and site preparation began for the construction of the Shard.
Towards the end of 2007, the gathering uncertainty in the global financial markets sparked concerns about the viability of the Shard. However, in January 2008, Sellar announced that it had secured funding from a consortium of Qatari investors, who had paid £150 million to secure an 80% stake in the project.[26] The consortium includedQatar National Bank, QInvest, Qatari Islamic Bank and the Qatari property developer Barwa Real Estate, as well as Sellar Property. The deal involved a buyout of the Halabi and CLS Holdings stakes, and part of the Sellar Property stake.[27] The new owners promised to provide the first tranche of finance, allowing construction of the tower to begin. In 2009, the State of Qatar consolidated its ownership of London Bridge Quarter (known now as Shard Quarter), including The Shard, through the purchase of the private Qatari investors' stakes. Shard Quarter is today jointly owned by the State of Qatar and Sellar.[9]
Renzo Piano, the project's architect, designed The Shard as a spire-like sculpture emerging from theRiver Thames.[16] He was inspired by the railway lines next to the site, the Londonspires depicted by the 18th-centuryVenetian painterCanaletto, and themasts of sailing ships.[28] Piano's design met criticism from English Heritage, who claimed the building would be "a shard of glass through the heart of historic London", giving the building its name, The Shard.[29] Piano considered the slender, spire-like form of the tower a positive addition to the London skyline, recalling the church steeples featured in historic engravings of the city, and believed that its presence would be far more delicate than opponents of the project alleged. He proposed a sophisticated use ofglazing, with expressivefaçades of angled glass panes intended to reflect sunlight and the sky above, so that the appearance of the building would change according to the weather and seasons.[30] The building features 11,000 panes of glass, with a total surface area of 602,779 square feet (56,000.0 m2) equivalent to the area of almost eight Wembley football pitches.
The Shard was designed with energy efficiency in mind. It is fitted with acombined heat and power (CHP) plant, operating on natural gas from theNational Grid. Fuel is efficiently converted to electricity, and heat is recovered from the engine to provide hot water for the building.[31]
Following the destruction ofNew York'sWorld Trade Center (WTC) in theterror attacks of 11 September 2001, architects and structural engineers worldwide began re-evaluating the design of tall structures. The Shard's early conceptual designs were among the first in the UK to be amended following the publication of the USNational Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report into the collapse of the WTC. The building is designed to maintain its stability under very onerous conditions,[32] with itspost-tensioned concrete and composite floors, load-bearing pillars, and tapering shape giving it a sway tolerance of 400 millimetres (16 in).[33]
In 2014, The Shard claimed first place at theEmporis Skyscraper Awards, recognising buildings over 100 m (328 ft) completed in the previous twelve months. The Emporis judges hailed the building as "a skyscraper that is recognized immediately and which is already considered London's new emblem".[34]
| Floors | Space designation[35][36][37] |
|---|---|
| 73–95 | Spire |
| 68–72 | The View from The Shard (observatory) |
| 53–65 | Residences |
| 34–52 | Shangri-La Hotel |
| 33 | Hutong |
| 32 | Oblix |
| 31 | Aqua Shard |
| 28 | South Hook Gas / Jellyfish |
| 27 | Arma Partners /Campari Group |
| 26 | CoStar Group |
| 24–25 | The Office Group |
| 23 | Foresight Group |
| 22 | Jellyfish |
| 20–21 | Kraft Heinz |
| 19 | Medical Protection Society |
| 18 | Gallup /Foresight Group |
| 17 | Warwick Business School /Sage Group |
| 16 | Al Jazeera Media Network |
| 15 | Mathys & Squire / Arcapita / Xio Partners / Fulcrum Chambers |
| 14 | Duff & Phelps |
| 13 | Warwick Business School /Duff & Phelps /Sage Group |
| 12 | Mitie |
| 11 | Cognism / Rider Levett Bucknall |
| 10 | Real Estate Management (UK) Limited /Robert Half / Protiviti |
| 9 | Merit Group / Sapphire Systems /Siteimprove |
| 8 | Greenberg Traurig |
| 7 | Matches Fashion |
| 4–6 | Clinic (HCA Healthcare at the Shard)[38] |
| 3 | Shard Quarter Management Suite |
| 2 | Office Reception |
| Ground | Hotel, restaurant and observatory entrances |
For the construction of the skyscraper some path-breaking engineering methods were used, such as top-down construction, where foundations are dug while the core is built up – this was a first for the UK.[39] In February 2009, a mobile crane and a small piling rig arrived on site. In early March 2009, the crane began putting steel beams into the ground, as part of preparations for the core of the building. Full construction began on 16 March 2009. Demolition work on New London Bridge House started in May 2009, as part of the concurrent London Bridge Place project. The first steelwork went into The Shard's piles on 28 April.[40] Five cranes were used to build The Shard, with four of them 'jumping' with the tower as it rose. Crane 1 was erected in September 2009 and Crane 2 was erected at the beginning of October.[41] By 20 October 2009, steel beams had begun appearing on site, with concrete being poured at the northern part of the site, ready for Crane 3.
By March 2010, the concrete core was rising steadily at about 3 m (10 ft) a day.[42] After a pause in March–April 2010, it continued rising, reaching the 33rd floor in mid-June, almost level with the top ofGuy's Hospital, which stands at 143 m (469 ft). On 27 July 2010, the core stopped rising, having reached the 38th floor, and was reconfigured for further construction.[43] By mid-November 2010, the core had reached the 68th floor, with the tower's steel reaching the 40th floor and glass cladding enveloping a third of the building. In late November, the core's height exceeded 235 m (771 ft), endingOne Canada Square's 18-year reign as Britain's tallest building.[44]
The Shard's concrete core topped out at the 72nd floor in early 2011, standing at 244 m (801 ft). The early part of January 2011 saw the installation of hydraulic screens, which were used to form the concrete floors of the hotel and apartment section of the tower, and rose with the floors up to the 69th floor. On 25 January 2011, the concrete pumps began pouring the first concrete floor at the 41st floor. By the end of February 2011, concrete flooring had risen to the 46th floor, with a new floor being poured on average every week. The cladding of the structure also progressed, mainly on the tower's "backpack".[citation needed] During this phase of construction, a fox was discovered living at the top of the unfinished skyscraper. The fox, named Romeo by staff, is thought to have entered the building through the central stairwell. It survived by eating scraps of food left by builders working on the incomplete structure. The fox was captured and taken to Riverside Animal Centre in Wallington.[45]
August 2011 saw steady progress in construction, with cladding enveloping more than half the building's exterior. Pouring of the concrete floors reached the 67th floor, and progression on the tower's cladding reached the 58th floor. By mid-August, the core box had been removed. By 19 September 2011, the tower's steel was approaching the height of the completed core, reaching almost 244 m (801 ft).[46] On 24 September, a final crane – at the time, the tallest ever built in Britain – was erected to install the skyscraper's upper spire.[47] The spire was pre-fabricated and pre-assembled based upon 3D models, and underwent a "test run" inYorkshire before being lifted onto the building itself.[48] By late December 2011, The Shard had become the tallest building in the European Union, superseding theCommerzbank Tower in Frankfurt, Germany.[49]
The Shard's steel structure was topped out on 30 March 2012, when its 66-metre (217 ft), 500-tonne spire was winched into place.[50][51] The steel structure thus reached a height of 308.7 m (1,013 ft). The final 516 panes of glass were added shortly after, topping the tower out at its full height of 309.6 m (1,016 ft).[52]
The Shard was inaugurated on 5 July 2012 by thePrime Minister of Qatar,Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, in a ceremony attended byPrince Andrew, Duke of York.[53]Practical completion of the building was achieved in November 2012.
Standing 309.6 metres (1,016 ft) at its highest point, and 308.5 metres (1,012 ft) at the highest point of its steelwork,[54] The Shard became the tallest building in the European Union in December 2011,[49] and the tallest completed building in Europe on 30 March 2012. It is taller thanFrankfurt'sCommerzbank Tower at 259 m (850 ft) the record holder between 1997 and 2005 and three later skyscrapers ofMoscow: theTriumph-Palace,Naberezhnaya Tower, andCity of Capitals. These three had each held the title for roughly2+1⁄2 years. The Shard was overtaken by a fourth such tower in November 2012: the 339-metre (1,112 ft)Mercury City Tower.[55][56] The Shard was surpassed as the tallest European building outside Russia by the 310-metre (1,017 ft)Varso Tower,Warsaw, Poland in February 2021.
The Shard is the second-tallest free-standing structurein the United Kingdom, after the 330-metre (1,083 ft) concrete transmission tower atEmley Moor.[57] Another planned London skyscraper, thePinnacle (now replaced by22 Bishopsgate), was originally proposed to rival the height of The Shard, but was reduced to a height of 287.9 metres (945 ft) because of concerns from theCivil Aviation Authority.[58] It is taller thanall of the natural peaks in London and in adjoining counties, the highest of which isWalbury Hill, close toWiltshire.
The Shard comprises a 26-floor office complex, occupied by 32 companies across 10 business sectors, 3 restaurants—Aqua Shard, Oblix, and Hutong—the five-star Shangri-La The Shard, London hotel, 10 residential apartments, and the UK's highest viewing gallery,The View from The Shard.
In February 2013,The Sunday Times reported that the developers of The Shard were in negotiations to secure the first tenants of the building's 26 floors of office space. At the time, potential tenants included financial restructuring specialistsDuff & Phelps, private equity firm Hatton Corporation, and theSouth Hook Liquefied Natural Gas Company.[59][60]
The Shard's fourth, fifth, and sixth floors host the HCA (Hospital Corporations of America), part of London Bridge Hospital. The Shard's 31st, 32nd, and 33rd floors host three restaurants: Oblix,[61] Hutong,[62] and Aqua Shard.[63] The building'sShangri-La Hotel occupies floors 34–52.[64] The hotel was initially expected to open by the end of 2013,[65][66] but its opening was ultimately delayed to 6 May 2014.[67] In March 2014, Mathys & Squire became the first law firm to take tenancy in the building.[68][69] In May 2014, theForesight Group, an investment firm, moved its head UK office into The Shard on the 17th floor.[70] In June 2015,Warwick Business School opened its new base in The Shard, occupying the same floor and was officially opened by the mayor of London,Boris Johnson.[71] It houses a 100-seat lecture theatre and a smaller one at 60 seats, plus 8 seminar rooms and an IT lab, offering postgraduate and executive education.[72]
In July 2013, the Qatari broadcasterAl Jazeera Media Network announced that it would open a new television studio and newsroom forAl Jazeera English in The Shard.[73] Al Jazeera moved in on 13 September 2014; its first live broadcast from the building was on 10 November 2014.[74] The facility currently houses all primary operations for Al Jazeera Media Network's channels in London; it is capable of running an entire channel independent from Al Jazeera's other hubs, and is the network's second-biggest hub after its facility inDoha, Qatar.[75]
In January 2015, further tenants for The Shard were announced, including IO Oil & Gas Consulting,Gallup, andThe Office Group.[76] In May 2015, the American recruitment consultancyRobert Half International announced that it would move several branches of its business into The Shard, having purchased 20,000 square feet (1,900 m2) of floor space on the tower's tenth floor.[77] In August 2015, the international law firmGreenberg Traurig announced that it would open its offices on the eighth floor of The Shard by the end of the year.[78]
Matches Fashion took over 35,000 sq ft in January 2016, and six months later expanded its headquarter's presence in The Shard by 40%. In March 2016, marketing agency Jellyfish signed a lease for 9,017 square feet (837.7 m2) of office space on the 22nd floor, with occupancy beginning later in the year.[79] A month later, publishing house Dods Group let almost 17,000 square feet (1,600 m2) on Level 11, becoming The Shard's 28th office occupier. In December,Kraft Heinz relocated their European and UK headquarters from Hayes in Hillingdon to The Shard after taking 38,000 square feet (3,500 m2) on Levels 20 & 21.
The Shard offices were announced as fully let in October 2017, following lettings toMitie and existing occupiers, Foresight Group, andWarwick Business School.
In December 2011, a group of recreational explorers calling themselves the Place Hackers evaded security and made their way to the top of the Shard building site, climbing one of the tallest cranes in the process.[80] They later posted photographs of the London skyline taken from the top of the Shard on the Internet and received wide media attention. One member of the group,Oxford University researcherBradley Garrett, later revealed to various news outlets that over 20urban explorers had made their way to the top of the building during its construction.[81] In a 2012 article forDomus magazine, Garrett wrote that "the conceptual barrier to places in our cities is brought about by a process of engineered exclusion" and that the explorers were "cultivating the creative city that money can't buy".[82]
BASE jumpers reportedly jumped from The Shard over ten times between 2009 and 2012. Four jumps were reportedly made by Dan Witchalls, who had filmed one attempt. The highest jump was said to have been from a height of 260 metres (850 ft).[83] In March 2016 another person BASE jumped from The Shard.[84]
On 3 September 2012, a team of 40 people, includingPrince Andrew, Duke of York,abseiled from the tower's 87th floor. This feat was performed to raise money for theOutward Bound Trust and the Royal Marines Charitable Trust Fund.[85][86] In November 2012, the French urban climberAlain Robert was spotted in the building by security guards. At the end of the month, the Shard's owners won aninjunction to prevent him from entering or climbing the building.[87]
On 11 July 2013, sixGreenpeace volunteers climbed the Shard and unfurled a flag in protest againstArctic oil drilling byRoyal Dutch Shell.[88] The protestors announced they were "experienced climbers", but medical personnel were summoned to the base of the tower nonetheless.[88] The Shard's staff closed the tower's observatory and gave them a safety briefing and other advice during their climb.[88] After completing their 16-hour climb, the protestors were arrested by police on suspicion of aggravated trespass.[88]
| Records | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Tallest building in London 2010–present 309 metres (1,014 ft) | Current holder |
Tallest building in the United Kingdom 2010–present 309 metres (1,014 ft) | ||
| Preceded by | Tallest building in the European Union 2010–2020 309 metres (1,014 ft) | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Tallest building in Europe January 2012 – November 2012 309 metres (1,014 ft) | Succeeded by |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Geographic | |
