The Shard

Once finished, The Shard will be the largest tower in Western Europe. Standing at just over 300m it dominates the London skyline. It takes its place in modern architecture of today among many over towers and designs. To build this design, it has used techniques that have never been used in the UK before.

The design of The Shard, was a dream of Irvine Sellars in 2000 but this idea was quickly quashed, that was until he met Renzo Piano, an Italian Architect who'd previously designed the New York Times Building. You could see his flare from his design of the Shard. When he heard about its surrondings, of the River Thames and the railway he said the design was similar to that of a sail coming out of the sea and quickly sketched his ideas onto the back of the menu where the two were eating.

The design is split up into sections containing offices, restaurants, a hotel chain and then luxury apartments which will offer views of London that will not be rivaled. Much like the London Olympic Stadium, one of the things that held The Shard back was the financial crisis however a consortium from Quatar invested in The Shard meaning the project could go ahead.

One issue they faced was the location they was building. As they were building in the middle of London it meant it was a relativley small plot located between Guys Hospital, one of Londons busiest hospitals and London Bridge Station, Londons 4th busiest train station. To build the tower they first needed to knock down the building already standing there, however they had to be careful as the lower they made this tower the more it disturbed the current surface and could potentially pose a risk to nearby buildings and make their foundations move so they installed movement detection equipment into all of the buildings within 80m of where The Shard would be. In order for them to start construction of the foundations, they need to get rid of the current ones which are made from reinforced steel, at the only way to do this is by using explosives to blast them apart.

They needed to build a much stronger foundation that the current ones as the building was going to be much larger than before. However becaause of its close proximity to the River Thames, they needed to build a dam to stop any water coming into the excavation site. The base of the foundations will be made from 120 concrete steel piles. When constructing it, they used a top down method of construction, meaning as they dig the foundations they start building upwards so they are doing two jobs simulationusly saving time and money. When building a tower some of the issues they will face are the height in building as they will face issues if there is any wind as this will blow the cranes around when they're lifting the materials and also getting lifts high enough to some of the floors, one way which they got around the crane issue, was by installing a crane at the top of the lift shaft which enabled them to construct the floors below. When they get to the 50th floor building work stops with 45 floors left because they reach winds with speed in excess of 40mph and these winds get colder the higher they get colder. One way they neglected the wind that high up was by putting screens which would slid up when they went up to the next floor, which allowed them to continue building.

At the top of the luxury appartments, they needed to make sure there was no sway so to do this that placed a device which would absorb the movement, much like when you're earthquake proofing a building to share the movement around resulting in less movement this will mean the top of the building will sway less than previously. They got this idea from a skier and their poles and if they were put off balance then they would adjust their poles to balance themselves out again.

After 36 months of construction, In May 2012 the last part was put in place, bringing an end to one of the best skyscrapers in the world and something that is pathing the way for Architecture in London, bringing London's Architecture into the 21st Century and hopefully we will be seeing buildings like this dominating Londons skyline for many years to come.