The Shard

London, United Kingdom

The Shard is a 95-story, 309.6-meter (1,016-foot) mixed-use skyscraper at London Bridge in Southwark, London, and the tallest building in the United Kingdom. Designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop with Adamson Associates Architects, WSP as structural engineer, and Arup on building services, the tower tapers to a faceted glass spire inspired by London's church steeples and the masts of sailing ships depicted in Canaletto paintings.

Developed by Sellar Property Group, construction began in March 2009 and the tower topped out in March 2012, with a formal inauguration on July 5, 2012, and practical completion that November. The building rises above London Bridge station and was built with a sway tolerance of up to 400 millimeters and other measures designed to modern post-2001 tall-building safety standards.

The tower stacks several uses vertically: 26 floors of office space (floors 4 to 28), restaurants and bars (floors 31 to 33), the Shangri-La Hotel and Spa (floors 34 to 52), private residences (floors 53 to 65), the public viewing gallery The View from The Shard (floors 68 to 72), and an unoccupied spire (floors 73 to 95). Its facade uses roughly 11,000 panes of glass across more than 600,000 square feet of surface area.