The Shard: new star of the London skyline

AFP/London

Italian architect Renzo Piano (left), designer of London’s Shard building; Ali Shareef al-Emadi (second left), Qatar National Bank Group Chief Executive Officer and board member of the Shard Funding Limited; HE Sheikh Abdullah bin Saoud al-Thani, (second right) Governor of Qatar Central Bank and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Shard Funding Limited; and Irvine Sellar, Founder and Chairman of Sellar Property Group, attend a press briefing in central London yesterday. Twelve years after it was first sketched out, London’s Shard tower will be inaugurated today

Twelve years after it was first sketched out, London’s Shard tower will be inaugurated today to great fanfare. The inauguration of the jagged-tipped tower, which at 310m (1,017ft) 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, Europe’s tallest skyscraper, will be completed just ahead of the Olympic Games, which open on July 27 and will see around 2mn 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. Designed by Renzo Piano, the Italian architect behind the colourful Pompidou Centre in Paris, the glass tower sits south of the River Thames at the heart of a wider regeneration project in the London Bridge district. The idea, Piano said on a tour of the construction site in February, was to build a “vertical city” with capacity for 12,000 people, featuring a five-star hotel, luxury restaurants, 600,000 sq m 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.

The Shard, Europe’s tallest skyscraper, to be inaugurated in London today

The apartments will reportedly cost up to £50mn ($78mn) each. The £450mn ($705.4mn) 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% 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. HE the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabor al-Thani will attend the inauguration today, 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 302m 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 Piano, but its huge, futuristic form has been disapproved by some traditionalists. 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 Piano. “As an architect, if you make a mistake it stays there for a long time.”