The Shard reaches for London's sky: PhotoWatch

I couldn't resist pointing the Canon at the sunlight flaring off the cobbles of St Mary at Hill. The ever-rising Shard loomed over the City of London street like a Martian machine from War of the Worlds.

  I'll keep a watching photographic brief on the Shard at London Bridge Quarter. Architect Renzo Piano's 87-floor 'vertical city' is clambering into London's skyscape from its London Bridge foundations at an average rate of three metres per day. 

  Will the Shard become an iconic new London building, such as the Gherkin or the London Eye? Or just another modern weird edifice like City Hall? Perhaps, the Shard's 72nd floor public viewing gallery will convince Londoners and tourists this is the tower to visit.

Piano says masts of ships docked in the Pool of London and Monet's paintings of the Houses of Parliament inspired the Shard's conceptual design (see above photo of HMS Belfast in front of the Shard. Look at the radar mast; so that's how Piano tinkled up the idea!).

  Full construction started on 16 March, 2009. When completed, the £435 million Shard will stand as Western Europe's largest building at 310 metres (1,016 feet) high. 

  Even now, with its concrete core not yet completed, Piano's creation is now Britain's tallest building, surpassing the 235m (773ft) Canada Tower at Canary Wharf in late November (The Canada Tower is the pointed building at the far right of the masthead at the top of this page).

  The next two images (below) were taken from Tower Pier, next to the Tower of London. (Click on images to enlarge).

Piano's angled glass cladding is already creeping up around the steel and concrete core. Piano hopes the glass will give the Shard a delicate, slender appearance, reflecting light in different ways as the seasons change - just like a shard of glass. 

  The Shard's 130,000 square metres of floorspace will comprise offices, a hotel, restaurants and apartments. The viewing gallery will be 240m above street level. 

  Some 5,500 cubic metres of concrete were poured during a 36-hour period to create the raft on which the Shard sits. About 1,000 tons of reinforced steel were set into the concrete raft.

  Weeks ago, the Shard reached higher than the 180m (590ft) Swiss Re building or Gherkin.

Just how tall will the Shard feel? A good marker is when your viewing pod reaches the top point of the London Eye's revolution, a height of 136m (425ft). Another yardstick is the top of the Wembley Stadium arch, a height of 133m.

  The Shard replaces Southwark Towers, the former home of Pricewaterhouse Coopers.

 The developer is the Sellar Group on behalf of LBQ Limited. Mace are the main building contractor. Renzo Piano is the conceptual architect. Detailed architectural work has been carried out by Adamson Associates.

 It mightn't yet be everyone's cup of tea but, as you can see below, the Shard seems to  impress the birds.

Photos copyright of Paul Coleman. Not to be re-published without permission.


Paul Coleman, London, December 2010.

Seismic economics

Three massive calculations caught my attention in the past few days. First up, Jean-Max Bellerive, Prime Minister of Haiti, who says more than 200,000 people died in the catastrophic earthquake that devastated the Caribbean island on 12 January. Bellerive also says 300,000 were injured and 4,000 lost one or more limbs. Over 250,000 houses and 30,000 businesses were destroyed. 

Worse still, the earthquake devastated a country with a population three times larger than Jamaica but with less than half of Jamaica's economic output. Bellerive didn't put a cash figure on the destruction. "In terms of figures, it is disaster on a planetary scale," said Bellerive.

The second calculation comes from Los Angeles' money men who have calculated that California earns $100 billion every year from agriculture, oil and tourism that are the by-products of its earthquake prone geology. "California gets struck by a hugely destructive seismic shake every 100 to 150 years," says geologist Iain Stewart. The number crunchers in Los Angeles, Stewart adds, have calculated that "a major earthquake would cause up to $250 billion worth of damage, a huge sum. But averaged out over a century, they're still in profit, with $100 billion coming in every year versus a one-off hit of $250 billlion. That's a gain of forty to one. Any economist will tell you, that's a pretty decent return."

A smaller but similarly mammoth calculation has been attempted to analyse the cost benefits of Crossrail, the east-west rail link that will tunnel under London with a budget ceiling of £15.9 billion and which is scheduled to start operating trains in 2017.  Joe Weiss, transport projects director for the Corporation of London, (that's the local authority for the area known as the City of London, not the wider city of London), has calculated that Crossrail's costs could be outweighed by profit for the Treasury accrued from tax revenues generated by the new railway.

Weiss assumes Crossrail's enhancement of London's transport links will enable businesses to create 150,000 new jobs across London and south-eastern England. "That produces an extra two billion per year in tax revenues for the Treasury," says Weiss. Each of Crossrail's estimated 200m passenger journeys per year will generate a £1 per profit once operating costs are taken out. After ten years, Weiss goes on, Crossrail will have generated £2 billion in taxable fare revenue profits. 


Income from the sale and leasing of new offices being built in Canary Wharf, largely as result of Crossrail radically improving transport links to the area, will also be be taxed. "It's not unreasonable to expect over ten years an annual £0.6 billion from taxes on rentals alone and another £0.4 billion from the non-domestic business rate," Weiss continues. 

Hey Joe! Just give us the bottom line? "So in ten years, in real money, the government might see £23 billion back from the maximum of £15.9 billion committed to Crossrail," concludes Weiss.

Top photo: Haiti street scene (Courtesy of New York Times).
Middle: Designer's section impression of Crossrail station at Canary Wharf, east London (Courtesy of Crossrail).
Below: Blue line shows Crossrail route through central London on model of city.

Paul Coleman, London, February 2010.