All day, every day, pedestrians stop on a temporary footbridge leading
from London Bridge station to Guy’s Hospital and stare in wonder at the
vast hole, the size of 25 Olympic swimming pools, that has opened up below
them.
The great, noisy, floodlit pit swarms with workers in fluorescent jackets.
It bristles with cranes, excavators and jackhammers. And from its centre,
on scores of piles sunk deeper than Nelson’s Column and each as thick
as two oak trees, protrudes the core of what will soon be Europe’s tallest
building.
Credit crunch and critics notwithstanding, the Shard is rising — and it
is some “green shoot”. From now on, its steel and concrete skeleton will
grow by nearly two storeys a week. Soon it will tower over Guy’s, Borough
Market and poor old Southwark Cathedral. By late 2011 it will reach 1,016
ft (310 m), dominating London’s skyline and dwarfing Canary Wharf (771
ft), the Gherkin (590 ft) and every other landmark in the capital.
Designed by Renzo Piano, the Italian architect, it would have been taller
still, 1,450 ft, had the Civil Aviation Authority not imposed the 1,000
ft limit. “We got away with the extra 16 because we’re on lower ground,”
Irvine Sellar, the market-stall holder turned property magnate behind the
£1.4 billion project, says with a chuckle.
When completed in May 2012, the Shard will be a “vertical city” with
the 12 highest apartments in the UK, a five-star hotel, offices,
restaurants, bars and shops. More than 12,000 people will work there and
in the 17storey “Baby Shard” next door. The four floors of public
galleries will have views of the South Downs, the Channel or France —
depending on which promotional claim you believe.
Where nine glass facades that encase the Shard meet in a splintered
pinnacle, there will be a “contemplation room”.
The 87-storey Shard will contain 17,000 tons of steel, 54,000 cubic metres
of concrete and 56,000 square metres of glass — all on a footprint of
one acre. It will have 44 lifts, two running from top to bottom, and 306
flights of stairs.
But there will be only 48 parking spaces. This is because it will stand
atop new London Bridge bus and train stations served by six rail lines,
two Tube lines and 15 bus routes. During the construction, a monitoring
team is constantly watching for ground movements that could shift the
railway lines a ruinous millimetre, or for vibrations that could disrupt
the sensitive electron microscopes in Guy’s.
The Shard has plenty of critics. English Heritage calls it “a spike
through the heart of historic London”. Simon Jenkins, the National Trust
chairman and newspaper columnist, calls it “a relic of Ken Livingstone’s
desperate bid to imitate Manhattan or Dubai, a thundering great icon to
the debt mountain plonked down in Southwark’s still intimate streetscape
like a phallus from capitalist outer space”.
But its proponents see it as a symbol of the capital’s recovery —
concrete (and glass) proof of the city’s world-class status. They say
that it will regenerate the run-down heart of old London, and that building
the city upwards means it need not spread outwards: “tall not sprawl”.
It is a “tangible example of how the capital is powering its way out of
the recession,” Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, says. It “is a clear
and inspiring example of confidence in the capital’s economy”.
His predecessor, Mr Livingstone, has predicted that the Shard “will be
for London what the Empire State Building is for New York”. Mr Sellar
proclaims that it will be a “symbol for London that will last for
centuries”. He quickly adds: “At least two.”
For Mr Sellar, 70, the Shard is the culmination of what he calls a “very
long journey”. He was raised in North London, left school at 16, opened
a market stall in St Albans at 17, sold flared jeans on Carnaby Street
in the Swinging Sixties, and built up the Mates fashion chain. Retail led
to property development. He went bust in the crash of 1990, but bounced
back and is now worth £210 million, according to The Sunday Times Rich
List. He lives in Mayfair and drives a black Rolls- Royce with the number
plate BUY 1S.
Mr Sellar bought Southwark Towers, an ugly 1970s office block that the
Shard will replace, for £37 million in 1998. Mr Piano produced a design
based, he says, on the church spires and tall ship sails of Canaletto’s
18th-century London. They applied for planning permission only months
after the destruction of the World Trade Centre, which, says Mr Sellar,
“very nearly scuppered it” — the Shard will have “refuges” built into
its core.
The plan scraped past the council, but then faced a public inquiry where
conservation groups led by English Heritage claimed that it would usurp
St Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower of London and London’s skyline. John
Prescott, then Deputy Prime Minister, finally granted approval in
November 2003 because the proposed tower was “of the highest
architectural quality”.
Two of Mr Sellar’s partners dropped out. He lined up finance from Credit
Suisse, but the credit crunch put paid to that. Finally, a consortium of
Qatari banks rode to the rescue and now has an 80 per cent stake in the
project. “There were many, many moments when I thought we might not make
it,” Mr Sellar says.
Even now people say that he is crazy to proceed in a recession. Comparable
projects, including the “Cheesegrater” and the “Walkie Talkie”, have
been put on hold. Office building in London is at its lowest level in 30
years. Commercial rents have halved. But where others see gloom, he sees
opportunity. When the Shard is finished, he argues, the recession will
be over and London will be desperately short of highly regarded new office
space. “You succeed in spite of people, never with their help,” he tells
the naysayers. “Our confidence is absolute.”
The Shard certainly excites those looking from the footbridge. “It’s
amazing, fantastic,” Angus Murray, a travel agent who comes daily to
watch its progress, says. “There was loads of controversy about the
Gherkin but people love it now. This will be the same.”
“It’s going to do the area a lot of good,” Alyson Parker, a PA at Guy’s,
says. But, she adds: “It’ll make the hospital look like a matchbox.”