Piano's Shard: divisive new star of the London skyline
Glass structure 330 metres high will be officially unveiled as Europe’s tallest building this evening
The Shard is set to open as debate rages over its place in the London Skyline - some feel it ruins the city's recognised monuments such as St Paul's Cathedral, while others, including its architect Renzo Piano, think it will grow on its critics and ultimately be celebrated. A natural sound version of an AFP report.
Twelve years after it was first sketched out, London’s Shard tower is being inaugurated today to great fanfare – but Europe’s tallest skyscraper has won as many critics as it has admirers.
The inauguration of the jagged-tipped tower, which at 310 metres dwarfs nearby landmarks such as St Paul’s Cathedral and the Houses of Parliament, has been carefully timed.
Branded “an icon for London” by its developers, the Shard will be completed just ahead of the Olympic Games, which open on July 27 and will see around two million visitors pour into the British capital. With its striking silhouette, 95 floors and a viewing deck offering 360-degree panoramas, developer Sellar Property hopes the Shard can become a major tourist attraction.
“It will become as essential a part of a visit to London as going to the top of the Empire State Building is for visitors to New York,” said Irvine Sellar, the company’s chairman.
The inauguration will be as bold as the skyscraper’s shape, with a spectacular night-time laser show lighting up the city’s major landmarks to live music from the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Left: London’s Shard tower, designed by the architect of Malta’s new parliament Renzo Piano, is inaugurated today to great fanfare.Designed by Renzo Piano, the Italian architect behind the Valletta City Gate project, the glass tower sits south of the River Thames at the heart of a wider regeneration project in the London Bridge district.
The idea was to build a “vertical city” with capacity for 12,000 people, featuring a five-star hotel, luxury restaurants, 600,000 square metres of office space, and shops.
There will also be 10 flats with stunning views on floors 53 to 65 – the highest residential properties in Britain.
But any would-be resident will need a hefty bank account as well as a strong head for heights, because the apartments will reportedly cost up to £50 million each (€62 million).
“The Shard is the perfect metaphor for modern London,” one commentator observed recently in the pages of the Guardian newspaper.
“Expensive, off-limits and owned by foreign investors – the Shard extends the ways in which London is becoming more unequal.”
The €560 million project teetered on the brink of cancellation in 2007, when developers struggled to find investors as the credit crunch set in.
Qatar came to the rescue – funding 95 per cent of the construction, and adding the Shard to a bulging portfolio of London properties that includes the Olympic Village and the famous Harrods department store.
The tiny Gulf state’s Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani will attend the inauguration this evening alongside Queen Elizabeth II’s second son, Prince Andrew.
Construction of the Shard began in 2009. Since then, it has shot up to overtake the 302-metre Capital City Moscow Tower as the tallest in Europe.
It joins several imposing skyscrapers on the city’s horizon, including the Gherkin and the Heron Tower in the City of London financial district.
The Shard has won critical acclaim for Mr Piano, but its huge, futuristic form has angered traditionalists.
English Heritage, the body responsible for protecting historic sites, says the skyscraper taints a view of St Paul’s, while Unesco says it compromises the “visual integrity” of the Tower of London, one of its World Heritage sites.
Mr Piano has shrugged off the criticism, pointing out that St Paul’s, the original giant of the London skyline, was considered modern when it was built 300 years ago.
“When you’re making a building like this, that’s so important for the city, you have to be absolutely sure that it’s the right thing to do,” said Mr Piano.
“As an architect, if you make a mistake it stays there for a long time.”
Europe’s tallest buildings
• The Shard, London, Britain (2012) – 310 metres
• Capital City Moscow Tower, Russia (2010) – 302m
• Naberezhnaya Tower, Moscow, Russia (2007) – 268m
• Triumph-Palace, Moscow, Russia 2005) – 264m
• Istanbul Sapphire, Turkey 2011 – 261m
• Commerzbank Tower, Frankfurt, Germany (1997) – 259m
• Capital City St Petersburg Tower, Moscow,Russia 2010 – 257m
• MesseTurm, Frankfurt, Germany (1990) – 257m
• Torre Caja, Madrid, Spain (2008) – 250m
• Torre de Cristal, Madrid, Spain (2008) – 250m
• Federation Tower West, Moscow, Russia (2008 ) – 242m
• Moscow State University Russia (1953) – 240m
• Imperia Tower, Moscow, Russia (2011) – 239m
• Torre PwC, Madrid, Spain (2008) – 236m
• One Canada Square, London, Britain (1991) – 235m
• Torre Espacio, Madrid, Spain (2007) – 235m
• Torre Garibaldi, Milan, Italy (2011) – 231m
• Tour First, Paris, France (2011) – 231m
• Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw, Poland (1955) – 231m
• Heron Tower, London, Britain (2011) – 230m
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Joe Xuereb
Jul 15th 2012, 00:59
I think I have written this before but it bears repetition.
I attended the inauguration as a distant spectator, you understand! I am not used to rubbing shoulders with princes and potentates (apart from an invite to the Queen's Garden Party which cost me an arm and a leg as I couldn't go in my work-a-day glad rags. So I bought a suit 'biex inkun bħan-nies'. Shock! Horror! The provinciality. Last time I aired it, it was reduced to ribbons by the moths. Oh well!
The laser-show was a bit of a wet squib. The pictures in the newspapers of the Shard during its trial-run on the Wednesday showed a multi-coloured Shard all around. On the night, the following day, official inauguration day, the building was only really lit along a narrow margin running from top to bottom. I expected a firework display but none materialised. Maybe they got wet in the rain before they left the ground. There was supposed to be accompanying music but from where I was sitting on the dam sand (the tide was out), we heard nothing. I would have thought they'd relay the sound via loudspeakers dotted to within a mile of the Shard. Nothing!
If I am not mistaken Mr. Piano says that Christopher Wren, whose spires inspired the Shard but it is much bigger, of course, was of his time and this is the modern age. That the Shard is an obvious replica of a Wren spire, the power-games going on is obvious. Great architects are not known for their humility (although in the past, they at least built to the glory of god. But today?! Today's architect is like a grown boy driving around in a Lamborghini, an extension of himself(if you see what I mean), showing off to the envy of the males and the admiration of the females, all things being equal.
A Wikipedia search for the Shard confirms that it was financed by oil-rich Qatar, hence the presence of the Prime Minister of that country alongside a very English prince. Duh! The Shard and its symbolism being built as it is during a recession, marring(?) the London skyline but just off centre so we can live with it, may be in London. But is it.......?! Also, the financial bail-out for its erection came with very visible strings, very visibly attached. No outlets within the building that has anything to do with gambling or sale of alcohol will be allowed. So any English family buying any of the fifty million pound apartments will not be able to go down the lifts for a quick tipple.
An Englishman without his tipple?! You must be joking! Forget about getting a mortgage - or even ready cash, for one of these delightful bijou(like not) apartments. They will go to the highest bidders. Very likely Qatari tycoons with a dinar or two to spare. Who won't feel the need to nip downstairs for a pint. But I bet the kebab joint, by Royal Appointment, will be suitably dripping with fat. Just like mummy makes them.
Gonzi administration tried to get the project going all of twenty years ago if I am not mistaken. The Gonzi Admin. invited Renzo Piano. The project came to nothing but he still kept his fee I imagine. He was recalled by the Gonzi Admin. a second time twenty years later and the project finally got off its feet, symbolically by an unnecessary Parliament building on stilts. And the rest.
The trio(of buildings) will be a mausoleum to Gonzi's memory, and not necessarily as a eulogy either. Any more than 'id-Dar tad-Deheb' (Domus Aurea) in Rome is to Nerone's Janua Coeli (Bieb tal-Ġenna).
I note that many Maltese feel so stifled living on a tiny island that they will do/give/approve of anything to give a whiff of modernity. If they cannot have the highest they will at least settle for the ultra-modern. Fantasy achieved! At a price. Twice. And one very happy architect. Oh well! I guess at least it gave Mr. England a well-deserved rest.
Paul Caruana
Jul 6th 2012, 17:56
Kind of reminds me of the Tower of Sauron in the Lord of the rings movie(s) - without the eye!
Adriano Spiteri
Jul 6th 2012, 10:01
divisive - like the Valletta mess is going to be
thanks to Dr Gonzi who personally insisted in proceeding with the 'project'
Lawrence Fenech
Jul 6th 2012, 08:48
The bigest defect of Renzo Piano, the wrong buildings in the wrong places. No historic building was demolished to erect this building in London the contrary to Malta for the grotesque buildings ruining the historic Valletta.
Robert Mifsud
Jul 6th 2012, 10:55
Renzo Piano designs modern building. If the people choose to work with him they cannot except anything different.
Victor Laiviera
Jul 5th 2012, 20:09
Pity it didn't keep him busy enough to leave out capital city alone.
Alfred Fenech
Jul 5th 2012, 16:01
Money, money , money. Is there a recession around. Piano Huh !!!
Mr Joe Micallef
Jul 5th 2012, 15:39
Yeah the architecture half a penny guru has spoken. heed people heed.
If you only read beyond PL hogwash you would realise that a good number of Londoners think it spoils their Victorian heritage – which in reality masks their dislike of the brilliant structure because it is owned by Arabs much as your hogwash is a diatribe against the government! Morons the world over
m. borg (slm)
Jul 5th 2012, 13:30
Unlike Valletta , London's skyline has been already spoiled by other architectual monstrosities, so Piano's piece will not make any differnece there.
Franco Farrugia
Jul 5th 2012, 19:04
Now that's real wisdom yeah!
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