The Shard is the centerpiece of the £2 billion mixed-use development, London Bridge Quarter.
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When millions of international athletes and spectators
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descend on the United Kingdom next summer for the 2012 Olympics, the famous skyline of London will have a new global landmark for them to admire. The Shard, a narrow and elegant glazed tower, is Western Europe’s tallest building, and has become a source of some fascination to Londoners. Its allure is partly its sheer scale: at 1,016-feet tall and the equivalent of 95 stories high, The Shard is breathtaking by U.K. standards. Also, it’s designed to be an iconic public building, already being described as London’s answer to Paris’ Eiffel Tower or New York’s Empire State Building. Finally, there’s the rarity value. The recession has put a series of other major developments in the City on ice, yet during the worst of economic times The Shard defiantly continued to rise. In fact, The Shard is the centerpiece of the hugely ambitious £2 billion (approximately $3.26 billion U.S.) mixed-use development, London Bridge Quarter (LBQ). The tower itself will house a five-star Shangri-La hotel and spa, office space, restaurants and exclusive apartments. It is estimated that approximately 12,500 people will work at London Bridge Quarter when it is complete. The LBQ project also includes a new 10,000-square-foot public piazza, a redesigned and expanded London Bridge Station and bus terminal, and a 17-story, 600,000-squarefoot headquarters building named The Place. Like The Shard, The Place is designed by renowned Italian architect Renzo Piano, recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the American Institute of Architecture Gold Medal, the Kyoto Prize and the Sonning Prize. Piano’s other renowned designs include the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris; the New York Times Building in Manhattan; the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas; the Kansai Airport in Osaka, Japan; and the Modern Wing of the Chicago Art Institute. The man behind the London Bridge Quarter is selfmade property developer Irvine Sellar. His involvement in London Bridge’s reinvention began pragmatically, with the purchase of an investment property in the area, the Southwark Towers—a bland 1970s building, at the time leased to accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. Initially, he had no grand design to erect a record-breaking tower; in fact, he was attracted to the site specifically because it had a long-term quality tenant. Colliers international FALL 2011
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