#Shard of brilliance strongbox full
#Shard of brilliance strongbox windows

As for the environmental drawbacks of an all-glass tower, which can heat up like a greenhouse, they are less relevant in Britain’s temperate climate. The fissured sides also conceal ventilation grilles and service openings, from which cranes can emerge like robotic arms to clean and maintain the building. And, instead of corner offices for managers, there are “winter gardens” with openable windows. Floors of offices, with their central elevators and glass-lined perimeters, can all look very much alike, but the Shard’s irregular floor plans create something less regimented. The faceted form breaks up the scale inside, too. On a grey day such as today, however, the poetry is not quite so apparent, and its hulking mass is impossible to disguise. Its giant sides fold and overlap, creating fissures and niches what is more, being angled, they reflect the sky, fragmenting the building’s scale and turning it, says Piano, into “a mirror of London on a sunny day, it is fantastic”. Yet, where most glass towers are basic geometric forms, the Shard, which has been officially opened this month, achieves something more sculptural. What is difficult is to make a new shape that makes sense.”Ĭrystalline structures entranced such early modernists as Germany’s Bruno Taut, whose 1914 Glass Pavilion was adorned with such Utopian slogans as “Glass brings a new era” and “Light wants crystal”. “It is not difficult to make a new shape,” he says. Piano even christened the building, likening it to “a glass shard” at a press conference. It was Piano who recommended it be open to the public, via a viewing gallery at the top and three floors of restaurants a third of the way up. Piano also suggested what to put inside - a mix of office space on the lower floors, a hotel in the middle and apartments above. The tapering, faceted form of the Shard, referencing London’s history of spires and masts, was quickly agreed upon. He appears to have trusted Piano a great deal. Realising he had a golden opportunity to build something super-tall, the developer Irvine Sellar had been advised to get a highly credible architect after his first proposal, by Broadway Malyan, was mauled by the press. The inquiry approved the Shard on the strength of its exceptional design. “And I was keeping my fingers crossed in my pocket,” he says. But you have to be sure - because if you do something such as this wrong, it’s wrong for centuries.” He told the judge the same thing during the public inquiry into its planning. You cannot prove mathematically that what you’re doing is going to work. “There’s a moment when you need to trust,” Piano smiles, pointing at his shirt. Beneath his raincoat, he is wearing a T-shirt with a pink slogan. Tall, elegant, relaxed and mellifluously spoken, the 74-year-old Italian looks every bit the internationally renowned architect.

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Even from the eighth floor, the riverbank opposite is a blur, obscured by fog and a cascade of rainwater running all the way down the sloping windows from the 87th floor.īut Piano seems impervious to both the weather and the lightning bolts of criticism. On a clear day, apparently, you can see 97 kilometres from the top - but this isn’t one of them. To its supporters, however, it is a jolt of the modern - the moment London truly joined the 21st century.Īppropriately, on the day its architect Renzo Piano meets me there, the clouds have all but engulfed the building. To its opponents, it has stabbed London in the heart: It is too tall, it destroys the scale of the city, it disrupts historic views, it is in the wrong place, it is a waste of energy - a monument to greed, money, inequality, foreign influence and broken Britain. Few structures in Britain have so dominated the skyline or the architectural debate.

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Now that the building has reached its full height, it has inevitably become a lightning rod. The storm clouds have been gathering over the Shard ever since it was announced, 11 years ago.