[wjfox2004]

Meanwhile, here's a rendering by chest. I think it's fair to say this will radically alter the London skyline......



http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/just3yearstime.jpg

[NYguy]

I think that would actually change the perception of London, not in a bad way...

[TANGELD_SLC]

In my opinion, this is one of the best looking scrapers built across the pond! :yes:

The Shard is shuper shexy, that'sh for sure. :haha:

[wjfox2004]

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&storycode=3140788&channel=783&c=1&encCode=000000000198afc4


London through a Shard

19 May, 2009
By Ruth Bloomfield

This is London as you have never seen it before – a glimpse of what visitors to the Shard will see when it opens to the public in 2012.


http://www.bdonline.co.uk/Pictures/web/u/h/m/Shard1HP.jpg


LBQ, the Qatari and UK consortium behind the London Bridge landmark, has created a series of images giving an early taste of the new views of the capital the Renzo Piano tower will expose from its public viewing galleries.

Work on the Shard began earlier this year. It will contain offices, flats, a hotel, restaurants, with the developer claiming it “will herald a new era in high-rise development for London”.

At 310m and with 100 levels, the Shard will be the tallest building in Western Europe. The viewing galleries at a height of 244m will offer the highest publicly accessible observation point in London.

The viewing galleries are spread over floors 68, 69 and 72 and offer a vantage point at almost twice the height of the London Eye.

A triple-height space on the main viewing level will offer floor to ceiling heights of approximately 8m, while an “indoor/outdoor” experience on the third and highest observation deck will partially expose visitors to the elements.

The galleries will offer 360 degree views across London, with the South Downs (http://www.visitsouthdowns.com/client/images/19/UKmapnewwithinset.jpg) visible on a clear day.

James Sellar, chief executive of Sellar Property Group, which is part of the LBQ consortium, said: “The Shard is set to become one of the most significant additions to the London skyline in decades. From the outset, it has always been my aim to ensure that this wonderful building is open to the public, so that they get to experience the wonder of the Shard at first hand.”

[FrancoRey]

Still envious of this great tower. Hopefully the Leadenhall, Heron, and others will hurriedly follow suit with construction/completion (is pinnacle still on, btw?) :cool:

[wjfox2004]

Still envious of this great tower. Hopefully the Leadenhall, Heron, and others will hurriedly follow suit with construction/completion (is pinnacle still on, btw?) :cool:

Heron is already 1/3rd complete -

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=111003&page=4

Pinnacle is still at the piling stage, but it's 90% certain to go ahead.

Leadenhall is doubtful unfortunately.

[Tobz]

i really need to get to london soon, watch the construction sites and buy cheep ps3 games :D

[Chicago Shawn]

I am going to be seeing this project in a month. Has the progress gone past foundation work yet?

[wjfox2004]

I am going to be seeing this project in a month. Has the progress gone past foundation work yet?

Not yet. Maybe in 2-3 months.

[malec]

July 12th

July 9:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3510/3704858221_6e71104c32_b.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alessia_dominik/3704858221/

[mrnyc]

london is getting a modernized leg up on san francisco's iconic transamerica building with this!

[kenratboy]

london is getting a modernized leg up on san francisco's iconic transamerica building with this!

And it is just as controversial of a project to boot!

[wjfox2004]

A short video of the site which I took yesterday -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPKUJ5BYkWE

Watch in HQ. :)

[wjfox2004]

Construction animation with schedule -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WYKyCrK9tM

:banana:

[scalziand]

Construction animation with schedule -

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/8370/shard25.jpg

The placement of the crane seems remarkable. It's either going to be freestanding for a good bit or have exceptionally long braces.

[SD360]

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/8370/shard25.jpg

The placement of the crane seems remarkable. It's either going to be freestanding for a good bit or have exceptionally long braces.

just imagine, the crane operaters boss says to him "don't think about high-speed winds" :eek:

[Zapatan]

Well this building is rather sexy... cool for london!:cool:

[Pizzuti]

Yikes! That crane arrangement doesn't even seem realistic. I would have thought the building would be designed to allow the crane come up through the structure itself. Then those holes could be filled in as a final construction phase after the crane is taken down.

After reading about the repeated crane collapses in New York City, I wouldn't want to go anywhere near that thing!

[peanut gallery]

Wow, that rendering is outstanding. I cannot wait to see this building.

[wjfox2004]

It's official: the first above ground column is in place.

:banana: :banana: :banana:

Taken at 8.30am this morning..............



http://i620.photobucket.com/albums/tt283/skyscrapercitypics/skyscrapers/shard/1.jpg



http://i620.photobucket.com/albums/tt283/skyscrapercitypics/skyscrapers/shard/2.jpg



http://i620.photobucket.com/albums/tt283/skyscrapercitypics/skyscrapers/shard/3.jpg



http://i620.photobucket.com/albums/tt283/skyscrapercitypics/skyscrapers/shard/4.jpg

[JDRCRASH]

So it's officially U/C, then! :D

[uaarkson]

It's been officially U/C since they started piling, that was months ago.

[wjfox2004]

By Jimbo of SSC. The first of 3 tower cranes -



http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/5456/img2843b.jpg

[wjfox2004]

First tower crane is now fully up.


http://i36.tinypic.com/25gfp0o.jpg

[Hoodrat]

Thrilled to see this one go!

Congrats London :cheers:

[wjfox2004]

http://www.cnplus.co.uk/technical/tall-buildings/shard-project-chief-above-ground-by-xmas/5208843.article?referrer=RSS

Shard project chief: above ground by Xmas

1 October, 2009 | By Nick Whitten

A critical milestone was reached last week on the £425 million project to create Europe’s tallest building, when the first crane was installed.

Bernard Ainsworth said this proved that work on the main structure was going ahead, and that the 310 m-high Shard’s concrete core would be visible before the end of the year.

Piling is now all but complete, and excavation for the basement started last Thursday, with more than 100 contractors now on the site next to London Bridge.

Mr Ainsworth, of developer Sellar, said: “It all proves what we have said the whole time, that the intention was to build this. We were never here to pretend – it is definitely happening.”

The first of five tower cranes was erected by main contractor Mace, standing 105m above the ground.

It will initially be used to lift the reinforcement bar as the construction of the ground floor slab is completed.

A second crane will be put in place in the next couple of weeks to service the slipform core construction.

Byrne Brothers is on site to carry out the basement excavation with the help of Keltbray. Steel is expected to start going into the ground in mid to late November.

Mr Ainsworth added: “In this climate, any building is good. We are pleased with the progress so far. The team is building up.

“We have got to finish it by May 2012 so it needs to move speedily.”

By the end of 2010 the Shard’s concrete core will top out at around level 72 of the 87-storey building.

In all, four cranes will service the steel frame erection up to level 40, and one will continue to climb up the building from level 72 upwards to construct the steel spire.

Transport for London and upmarket hotel firm Shangri-La have between them agreed to take up 40 per cent of the Shard space.


---


:banana: :cheers: :banana: :cheers: :banana:

[kenratboy]

Wow! 72 floors in a year - seems fast for a project like this.

[Govertical]

So very glad to see this one a go! London deserves a world-class supertall!!

[L.u.v.]

Finally!. :)

[The Afterburner]

What stage of construction is it currently under?

[oli1994]

thats hat ive been trying to ask:@!!!

[Gamma-Hamster]

A critical milestone was reached last week on the £425 million project to create Europe’s tallest building, when the first crane was installed.


It will not be Europe's tallest.

[wjfox2004]

Posted by Ciudad Bristol on SSC:


http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a82/supertek/DSC02425.jpg

[wjfox2004]

And this is by Jimbo:


http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/1599/img2908.jpg

[ThreeHundred]

72 stories in a year? That's awfully fast.

[Aleks]

Yup! While everyone's holding their breathe on the WTC threads this thing pops up in a heartbeat!

Hurray for London!

[wjfox2004]

More pics from Chest. This thing is actually, finally rising!!



http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1020823.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1020800.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1020804.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1020790.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1020832.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1020817.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1020836.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1020838.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1020842.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1020811.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1020791.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1020816.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1020834.JPG

[djvandrake]

Personally speaking, I think this one of the most anticiapted and exciting projects in the world today. I love the design of this tower and can't wait to see it take form. Outstanding!

[colemonkee]

Ha! I had to do a double-take on that first pic. Looked like those people were walking in midair...

[SFUVancouver]

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1020823.JPG


I don't know... Compared to the people the tower isn't all that tall.

[KingKrunch]

It's nice to see an ambitious project like this one go forward despite all the financial turmoil these days.
And thank you wjfox for keeping all of us up to date :)

[wjfox2004]

I don't know... Compared to the people the tower isn't all that tall.

:haha:



And thank you wjfox for keeping all of us up to date :)

You're welcome. :)

[wjfox2004]

Here's a video from the site today. It's about 70mb / 5 minutes:

http://www.willfox.com/videos/skyscrapers/shard/3.wmv

I'd recommend viewing in full screen mode.

[wjfox2004]

It's available to watch on YouTube now -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njd0zUdqc2Q

[malec]

Update

http://i33.tinypic.com/5k0leq.jpg

[wjfox2004]

The first of the exterior steel columns being put in place (pics by SE9):


http://i36.tinypic.com/2jahsux.jpg

http://i38.tinypic.com/331j7e1.jpg

http://i33.tinypic.com/263bznq.jpg

http://i33.tinypic.com/2upfkv4.jpg

[TonyAnderson]

I can't wait to see this rise.

[eMKay]

Got my Popular Science yesterday, they had a little blurb about how they are shaving 7 months off the construction time....

Popular Science - December 2009

"Renzo Piano's 72-storie glass tower in London, expected to be the tallest building in Western Europe when it opens in 2012, employs a bold new method that could speed the construction of tomorrow's skyscrapers: Build the tower and dig the basement at the same time. A custom deep-diving rig put the tower's structural columns into the ground before excavation took place, so one construction crew can dig the basement-which otherwise puts everyone else on hold-while another installs elevators, staircases and mechanical fixtures on top of the columns. Engineer Bob Gordon of the Mace Group estimates that the technique will save seven months of construction time."

[Chicago Shawn]

Its great to see this thing finally rise.


Got my Popular Science yesterday, they had a little blurb about how they are shaving 7 months off the construction time....

Popular Science - December 2009

"Renzo Piano's 72-storie glass tower in London, expected to be the tallest building in Western Europe when it opens in 2012, employs a bold new method that could speed the construction of tomorrow's skyscrapers: Build the tower and dig the basement at the same time. A custom deep-diving rig put the tower's structural columns into the ground before excavation took place, so one construction crew can dig the basement-which otherwise puts everyone else on hold-while another installs elevators, staircases and mechanical fixtures on top of the columns. Engineer Bob Gordon of the Mace Group estimates that the technique will save seven months of construction time."

That is called top-down construction. Its relatively new, but it has been done of plenty of other projects before London Bridge Tower.

Don't be surprised if the excavation work runs behind schedule, it occasionally happens with this practice. The actual time savings is usually less then what is first expected.

[colemonkee]

^ This is the first time I've seen top-down construction used on a project of this size. Have any other supertalls been built with using top-down?

[Chicago Shawn]

^Not sure of any existing supertalls; but the Chicago Spire was going to use top-down for the 7 underground garage levels. The only area that has been fully excavated was to contain the tower's core.

[ardecila]

^ This is the first time I've seen top-down construction used on a project of this size. Have any other supertalls been built with using top-down?

River East Center in Chicago used this construction method, and so did Block 37. They sunk the caissons and poured a structural floor slab with earth beneath it. They left a few bays of the slab open and used mini-excavators to remove the dirt from underneath the slab. At 2 stories down, they set up forms and pour the first slab underground, etc until completed.

[Dylan Leblanc]

wow, nice building guys!

looking at the comparison diagram linked to at the top of the page I see that London is now finally getting a building as tall as the Eiffel Tower.

[Jarrod]

Holy crap this is going to be a beauty! I'm jealous! I'm thinking that it would fit nicely into Edmonton's skyline. Perhaps I should go to London and steal it :D

I can't wait to keep an eye out with the construction pictures! Congrats guys!

[kenratboy]

Holy crap this is going to be a beauty! I'm jealous! I'm thinking that it would fit nicely into Edmonton's skyline. Perhaps I should go to London and steal it :D

I can't wait to keep an eye out with the construction pictures! Congrats guys!

"Sir, that will be an addition $25 checked baggage fee."

[QuarterMileSidewalk]

^lol!

[chest]

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1030701.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1030727.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1030719.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1030784.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1030817.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1030775.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1030778.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1030798.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1030823.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1030833.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1030755.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1030711.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1030829.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1030776.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1030835.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1030782.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1030793.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1030743.JPG

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1030738.JPG

[wjfox2004]

Couple of pics from this evening.


http://www.willfox.com/photos/skyscrapers/shard/1.jpg



http://www.willfox.com/photos/skyscrapers/shard/2.jpg

[Aleks]

Hard to believe such a big building will be located in such a small street! Good thing they're also building a metro station.

So basically, they're building the outside of the base while digging up the foundation for the core? And they'll build the core later on? Or am I wrong?

[wjfox2004]

Yep, a concrete core should rise in January.

Re: the metro station, it already exists, they're just renovating it.

[Chelsea Spy]

super excited about this tower... I can see it rise from my apartment

btw, London Bridge is more than metro station - is a major tube/ rail interchange...

[NYguy]

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/construction_and_property/article6963365.ece

London’s new icon or an ugly scar on the skyline

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00662/Shard_385x185_662005a.jpg
(Ben Gurr/The Times)
Workers at the Shard construction site

Martin Fletcher
December 21, 2009


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.”

[Jonovision]

This is one of the latest updates from over on SC from Cybertect.

Here's a few other pics from lunch time today


St Thomas Street view

http://www.cybertects.co.uk/gallery2/d/90320-2/20091217_0056.jpg



The new stuff alongside Joiner Street and the pedestrian bridge

http://www.cybertects.co.uk/gallery2/d/90362-2/20091217_0027.jpg


The interior of the site is getting quite busy with structural steel

http://www.cybertects.co.uk/gallery2/d/90326-2/20091217_0052.jpg


... which is making clear sight-lines of activity in the basement fairly limited (unless you're looking through the mucky plastic sheet on the bridge)

http://www.cybertects.co.uk/gallery2/d/90332-2/20091217_0043.jpg

http://www.cybertects.co.uk/gallery2/d/90350-2/20091217_0033.jpg


A couple of close ups of the steel joints

http://www.cybertects.co.uk/gallery2/d/90344-2/20091217_0037.jpg

http://www.cybertects.co.uk/gallery2/d/90356-2/20091217_0031.jpg



Just as I was leaving we had a brief, but quite heavy, fall of snow - unusual for London these days, especially in December. One might even say 'exceptional' :)

http://www.cybertects.co.uk/gallery2/d/90308-2/20091217_0086.jpg

There's more snowfall forecast overnight, so I guess we'll have to see what it's like in the morning.

[wjfox2004]

I've created a Twitter page for the Shard -

http://twitter.com/LondonShard

:)

[uaarkson]

I'm really glad that both London and New York are getting brand new 21st century icons. Both cities are derided by the unfamiliar for being 'old'. This should completely change everyone's perception of modern London when the Olympics roll around. I imagine just about every shot of the city after commercial breaks will include the Shard.

[wjfox2004]

A video from today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzueIBwgEtk


You can download the hi-res version here -

http://www.willfox.com/videos/skyscrapers/shard/4.wmv

[Plokoon11]

Wow this one is going up fast!

[kenratboy]

Those gargantuan columns are a hint of what is to rise at this site. Looks so out-of-scale...in a good way!

[Zapatan]

Great progress since I last checked this thread!! Absolutely love this building :)

[Chelsea Spy]

this building is going to be supercool, a visionary tower...

[atl2phx]

this building is going to be supercool, a visionary tower...

agreed, i would love to see the shard in my town.

it's going to be stunning.

[malec]

From yesterday

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4049/4234897823_914d8cda75_b.jpg

by GazKinz.

[wjfox2004]

The webcam from Guys Hospital is still down. The other two are okay now.

You can see part of the structure rising in the bottom one...



http://i48.tinypic.com/2e5irgi.jpg


http://i47.tinypic.com/28k0jkp.jpg

[AtlantaMustang]

agreed, i would love to see the shard in my town.

it's going to be stunning.

agreed, the shard in atlanta would be amazing :yes:

[wjfox2004]

The core is now beginning to rise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zl2FilU9m8

:)

[Complex01]

Ah very nice. It will be kewl to see it rise. Looks awesome...

:cool:

[ThreeHundred]

Even though I don't know what to call London's CBD (The City?), are there any towers under construction or proposed near the Shard that'll help integrate it to The Pinnacle, Swiss Re and others?

[NYguy]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601108&sid=asyu2hRRumfY

Shard Developer Sellar to Seek Highest Office Rents Since 1980s

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/data?pid=avimage&iid=i2ZXKz0wAwXM

By Chris Bourke
Jan. 21 (Bloomberg)


To win the cash he needed to build western Europe’s tallest building, Irvine Sellar told his Qatari investors that space in the London tower would fetch the highest office rents since the 1980s property boom.

The Shard, due to open by the 2012 London Olympics, is one of the few towers to be built in London among a dozen conceived at the turn of the 21st century.

Sellar aims to charge as much as 70 pounds ($114) a square foot for office space, about 60 percent more than even the best offices in the main financial district half a mile away, according to data compiled by Cushman & Wakefield, though that wasn’t the only attraction for Qatar.

Named for its resemblance to a sliver of glass, the Shard will rise 310 meters (1,017 feet) from a site near London Bridge across the River Thames from the City of London. The 80-story building will include 13 luxury apartments with an estimated value of at least 15 million pounds each and a five-star hotel.

“We won’t be pushing the market -- the market will come to us,” said Sellar, 71, during an interview last week at his office in London’s Mayfair district. “Office rents reached 70 pounds probably 25 years ago in the City of London, so we’ve been there before.”

First Tenant

Transport for London, the operator of trains and buses in the city, has agreed to lease seven lower floors in the Shard. That leaves Sellar with about two thirds of the 600,000 square feet (56,000 square meters) of office space to fill in the tower and a similar amount in a building next door called London Bridge Place, due to be completed in 2013.

Prime office rents in the City of London climbed for the first time in three years last quarter. Even so, Sellar may struggle to find companies prepared to pay 70 pounds a square foot for space on the tower’s upper floors, according to Alan Patterson, head of European research at AXA Real Estate Investment Management in London.

“His problem is the short time-scale,” Patterson said by telephone. “If the tower was completing in three or four years, you could perhaps see it, but I think two years will be tight for him.”

Sellar, born and raised in London, started out selling gloves made by his father at a market. In 1969, he opened his first clothing store on Carnaby Street, and spent the next decade creating a chain of 90 outlets across the country.

Bell-Bottoms

Mates by Irvine Sellar, as the shops were called, sold bell-bottom jeans, floral jackets and other trendy clothes and were the first boutiques in Britain to offer apparel for both men and women. At one time, there were seven stores on London’s Oxford Street alone, counting Judy Garland and George Harrison among their customers.

“What they saw in it, quite frankly, was something I’ve never been able to see, because it wasn’t that great,” Sellar said.

Sellar switched to real estate in the early 1980s because “property and retail go hand-in-glove,” he said. His company, Ford Sellar Morris, developed department stores and other commercial buildings for several years until a recession at the start of the next decade led to its collapse in 1991. Sellar lost 28 million pounds.

Undeterred, he set up Sellar Property Group a year later, and has since completed projects including the Pompey Centre, a retail park in the southern English city of Portsmouth with space of 370,000 square feet.

“You can throw me in the desert and I’ll find a way of making a living,” he said.

Rich List

Sellar Property Group owns real estate valued at 450 million pounds, according to Sellar. The company has 1 million square feet of developments in the pipeline, not including the Shard. Sellar’s 36-year-old son, James, is chief executive officer and together they were worth about 165 million pounds in 2009, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. That was 45 million pounds less than the previous year.

The Shard was designed in 2000 by Renzo Piano, the Italian architect best known for creating Paris’s Pompidou Center of modern art with Britain’s Richard Rogers.

Sellar had decided to redevelop a gray office block next to London Bridge station and flew to Berlin in March of that year to meet Piano for lunch. According to Sellar, the architect spoke of his contempt for tall buildings during the meal, before flipping over the restaurant’s menu and sketching an iceberg- like sculpture emerging from the River Thames.

Phallic Symbols

“Tall buildings are often phallic symbols, a symbol of the desire to show how powerful you are,” Piano said in a telephone interview. “But sometimes towers can be good as they save space and give space back to the city.”

At that time, the U.K. was on the cusp of a five-year real estate boom that resulted in plans to build about a dozen towers in and around the City of London. Most of those that hadn’t been completed by the market’s peak in mid-2007 were shelved because banks had stopped lending.

In 2008, Land Securities Group Plc stopped work on the London skyscraper known as the Walkie-Talkie and British Land Co. delayed construction of the tower nicknamed the Cheesegrater. No companies had agreed to rent space in the buildings.

The global financial crisis pushed Britain into its longest recession on record, driving property values down by 44 percent from the top of the market and depressing rents. About 5 million square feet of offices were under construction in London without a tenant at the end of last year, according to a Cushman & Wakefield report published on Jan. 8.

Diminishing Supply

“The majority of this space is due onstream in the first six months of 2010, after which supply will start to diminish, placing rents under pressure,” the broker said.

Office rents in central London may have already bottomed out and will probably recover before the rest of the country, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said in a report published today.

The Shard also came close to being abandoned. Sellar sought permission to build the skyscraper months after the terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Center in 2001 and said he only got through the approval process “by the skin of my teeth.”

English Heritage, the official organization for archaeology, heritage and conservation in England, then opposed the tower, calling it “a spike through the heart of historic London.”

The government approved the plans after a public inquiry, thanks in part to Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London who championed the tower from its inception.

“From the moment I met Irvine, I realized he wanted a legacy that he’d be respected for,” Livingstone said in an interview. “He doesn’t actually need any more money.”

Financing Challenge

Sellar’s next challenge was to secure financing for the project. Credit Suisse Group AG had agreed to provide the money, only to pull out because of the credit crunch. Sellar then fell out with his original partners, real-estate investors CLS Holdings Plc and Simon Halabi, leaving the door open for Qatar to come on board.

By then, Sellar was already in talks with four banks from the Arab emirate. After a year of negotiations, they each agreed to buy 20 percent of the equity, the same as Sellar. The developer’s stake was reduced from about a third.

In October, the lenders sold their shares to the Qatar Central Bank. The governor, Sheikh Abdulla Bin Saoud Al-Thani, said in December that the Shard would be “a symbol of the close ties between Qatar and the United Kingdom.”

Shangri-La Hotel

The Qataris invested in a building that will have 44 elevators and eight escalators when it opens in May 2012. London’s first Shangri-La Hotel, operated by the Singapore-based company of the same name, will take up 19 floors and the Shard will also contain stores and restaurants.

The best views will be from the luxury apartments near the top of the tower. These properties, which the developer estimates will be worth 5,000 pounds a square foot, will either be sold or rented out, James Sellar said in an interview.

That would rival One Hyde Park, a 1 billion-pound luxury development in the more affluent London district of Knightsbridge. Apartments were sold for an average of about 5,700 pounds a square foot in 2008, according to Knight Frank LLP, one of the brokers that handled the transactions. A second wave of sales is scheduled for the second quarter.

The Shard will dwarf Commerzbank Tower, a 259-meter high building in Frankfurt that’s been western Europe’s tallest since it was constructed in 1997.

“We all have an element of ego,” said Irvine Sellar. “It’s just nice to leave a legacy and say, well that’s an achievement.”

[Spotila]

All 4 of the worlds alpha cities getting a new tallest atm, awesome!

[wjfox2004]

Up she goes ......

http://i967.photobucket.com/albums/ae158/mrtcas/Jan12-Feb03Progress.gif

:cheers:

[TonyAnderson]

Very cool :previous:

[wjfox2004]

The core is starting to look fairly substantial in this view:


http://i50.tinypic.com/10dfar7.jpg

[wjfox2004]

http://i47.tinypic.com/257lglu.jpg

[Aleks]

holy crap this thing is rising fast. would love to see it in person :(

[CHAPINM1]

Wow, it did pick up steam! In not quite two weeks time the core had risen quite dramatically!

[colemonkee]

Is Guy's getting a facelift in the background?

[wjfox2004]

Is Guy's getting a facelift in the background?

Actually, that's New London Bridge House. And it's being demolished, to make way for this -

http://www.archhis.com/bldg/images/01727001.jpg

[KVNBKLYN]

What an exciting project for London!

One thing, though: it doesn't really look much like a shard to me. It looks more like a giant tepee.
Do Brits use the word tepee? If so, I hope that becomes its unofficial nickname.

http://www.willfox.com/images/skyscrapers/lbt/1.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Tipi01.jpg/800px-Tipi01.jpg

[speedy1979]

You're absolutely right it does look like a tepee. But I doubt the Brits will call it that.

[FerrariEnzo]

^"rubbish" they love westerns

[RobH]

It's called the Shard because English Heritage (God love 'em) claimed it would be like driving a shard of glass through the heart of historic London. The project gained approval and the developers turned this negative description, designed to harm the project in the minds of the public, into a positive nickname. They're rubbing the noses of the naysayers right in it by using their insult as the name of the project; that's why I hope when it's towering above everything else in the city, the nickname sticks.

[kenratboy]

It's called the Shard because English Heritage (God love 'em) claimed it would be like driving a shard of glass through the heart of historic London. The project gained approval and the developers turned this negative description, designed to harm the project in the minds of the public, into a positive nickname. They're rubbing the noses of the naysayers right in it by using their insult as the name of the project; that's why I hope when it's towering above everything else in the city, the nickname sticks.

:haha:

In London of all places.

[chest]

getting exciting now its becoming visible from street level

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1010865.JPG
http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1010850.JPG
http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1010836.JPG
http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/SHARDHIGH2.JPG
http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/SHARDHIGH3.JPG
http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1010822.JPG
http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1010823.JPG

[Pizzuti]

It's interesting to see the opposition that there has been to this.

I think it will look better when there are many other supertall skyscrapers around it to bring it to scale. With Europe's restraint from filling cities with high-rises I don't know how long it will take, but I think the shard would make a great addition to a cluster of more conventionally-shaped skyscrapers.

[StatenIslander237]

It's amazing how fast buildings rise in London, the skyline will really be transformed in the coming years...and London as a whole will be a totally changed metropolis by the time the Olympics arrive in 2012! :banana:

[Chelsea Spy]

this tower is set to rise super fast - should be finished by 2012. When complemented by the 900 and something foot Pinnacle across the river in the City, London's skyline will be dominated by 2 of the world's most beautiful and dramatic skyscrapers! The future is coming fast!!!

[wjfox2004]

A short video I made today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiwqcM9f7A8


Hi-res version available here (25mb)

http://www.willfox.com/videos/skyscrapers/shard/5.wmv

[jcchii]

my favorite U/C in the world

[TonyAnderson]

It's called the Shard because English Heritage (God love 'em) claimed it would be like driving a shard of glass through the heart of historic London. The project gained approval and the developers turned this negative description, designed to harm the project in the minds of the public, into a positive nickname. They're rubbing the noses of the naysayers right in it by using their insult as the name of the project; that's why I hope when it's towering above everything else in the city, the nickname sticks.

Well, that's better than calling it the 'Shart'. Refer to the movie 'Along came Polly' for a idea of what that means (Hint: It's a combination of two words)

[NYguy]

http://homepage.mac.com/benveasey/.Public/P1010823.JPG

I like the name on the core. Let there be no confusion. More towers should do it that way.