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#1
July 31st, 2003, 12:37 PM
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The Shard of Glass - Renzo Piano's London Bridge Tower
"The Shard of Glass"
Renzo Piano's London Bridge Tower by Kriss Pettersen "Architects have to dream, we have to search for our Atlantises, to be explorers, adventurers, and yet to build responsibly and well." Renzo Piano's words speak to the difficulties architects face when designing a groundbreaking project such as the proposed London Bridge Tower, a 1,016 foot tall mixed use development in the central London borough of Southward, by the river Thames. The architect must conceptualize the idea, make it practical to build, then communicate it to the public - all just to have a chance at seeing the dream become a reality. "We need to make a building that doesn't shut people out, one that responds to local as well as city-wide needs. A building of this scale, this ambition, cannot be just for private gain: it becomes a public project privately financed." Just as Daniel Libeskind is politicing in New York to keep his World Trade Center design intact, Piano also faces immense political pressure in London, pressure that he sees can only be solved by showing the people of London how his design will respond to their concerns. Those against the project defend the English Heritage, claiming the building would interfere with legally protected views of St. Paul's Cathedral and "open the floodgates to high-rise development in the city's historic core." Those for the project belive it would identify London as a 21st-Century capital while filling a growing need for desirable office space in the city. Of course, there are always financial concerns outside the architect's control. The project, developed by Irvine Sellar, is estimated to cost close to £500m and as with most large-scale developments, will hinge on financing. But the more that Piano can show how beneficial the design will be for the city of London, a political blessing will go a long way to raising the necessary funds for its construction. "Of course, I understand the suspicions of Londoners who have seen so many cynical and ugly commercial towers - hermetic buildings cut off from public life and dead at night - dominate the city over the past 40 years. How can we show this is very different? How can I say to people there, 'Trust me?'" Piano himself refers to his design as a "Shard of Glass", describing the tower's design as a sharp and light presence in the London skyline, its shape generous at the bottom and narrow at the top, disappearing into the air like the mast of a tall ship. The tower is planned to be sheathed in glass, using a ventilated double-skin facade to reduce heat gain. The building's shape also lends itself to a pragmatic structural approach, and Piano has aligned himself with Ove Arup and Partners for both structural and sustainable design. Targeting a 30% reduction in energy compared to a conventional tall building, Arup's contributions will only help Piano realize his desire for human, technological, energetic and economic sustainability. "We want the tower to be a vertical city of eight or nine thousand people, with mixed uses - shops, entertainment, flats, offices, observation galleries, and even a small church, or chapel of peace, 260m in the air. We want it to be a democratic project. We will only do it if we can achieve the right quality of design and construction." In a dense city such as London, a mixed-use skyscraper project makes sense. Its location has excellent public transport connections as London Bridge station connects mainline and Tube trains and has a large bus depot. However, for such a building to become reality, concessions must certainly need to be made - concessions that Renzo Piano may not be willing to make. The longer the project takes to get started, the more it will cost. The developer has promised to honor a legal agreement he signed with the architect binding him to follow through on the quality that Piano demands. But if the building is still under construction in 2009, it might be hard to stay the course on quality with escalating construction costs and the pressure to complete the project. "It is that search for Atlantis, for something special. We have to have the confidence to believe that we can create a tower that Londoners will come to respect as they respect St Paul's. The power of Mammon created a beautiful city like Siena; this power can be put to good civic use, not just to make developers rich. Well, there will be many more talks, I'm sure. This is not the sort of building you can put up overnight. Like a violin, it will need careful tuning." As one of the masters of modern architecture, Renzo Piano knows that the approval process for a project such as the London Bridge Tower is a long one, and that he must do his role as the architect to represent the design without sounding too high and mighty. Including the city officials as part of the team and listening to their concerns is very important, as well as giving the people of London the sense of the building's importance for the future of the city. And even if the project is granted approval to proceed, there will still be many meetings with building officials where Piano will need to continue to push design excellence to keep the tower's design intact, even while making the inevitable necessary concessions. It will be this ability that will ultimately prove the success of the project. Renzo Piano quotes from interview with UK Guardian Unlimited 
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#3
July 31st, 2003, 10:38 PM
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The Shard of Glass
I have a feeling that this might not be so recent an article. *The rendering posted at the end is of the preliminary design for the tower, which in more recent renderings looks a lot more shard-of-glassy and transparent. *The redesign may well have been a result of a public inquiry following the building's initial approval.
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#4
July 31st, 2003, 10:44 PM
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The Shard of Glass
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#5
July 31st, 2003, 11:16 PM
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The Shard of Glass
http://www.londonbridgetower.com
There's a nice rendering from street level (not the one on the site) I can't find anymore.
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#6
August 1st, 2003, 10:16 AM
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The Shard of Glass
The transparent structure at the top makes me think of an uncompleted construction, which is a brilliant way of eluding the typical flat roof/spire alternative.
I also think of Nouvel's Tour Sans Fins (again...)  The above rendering doesn't show clearly the similarity of the tops, but there's one.
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#8
August 1st, 2003, 02:08 PM
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The Shard of Glass
Quote:
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#10
August 1st, 2003, 06:47 PM
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The Shard of Glass
List of prospective, u/c, and completed London skyscrapers over 400 feet, as listed by ss.com:
London Bridge Tower, Southwark (approved) 1017 feet, 66 stories Columbus Tower, Tower Hamlets (proposed) 778 feet, 61 stories One Canada Square, Canary Wharf (current tallest) 771 feet, 50 stories 122 Leadenhall Street, City of London (proposed) 758 feet, 48 stories The Minerva Building, City of London (proposed) 712 feet, 53 stories One North Quay, Canary Wharf (proposed) 708 feet, 44 stories One Riverside South, Canary Wharf (proposed) 702 feet, 44 stories Three North Quay, Canary Wharf (proposed) 667 feet, 38 stories 8 Canada Square, Canary Wharf 655 feet, 45 stories 25 Canada Square, Canary Wharf 655 feet, 45 stories British Telecom Tower, Bloomsbury-Fitzrovia 625 feet Two Riverside South, Canary Wharf (proposed) 619 feet, 38 stories Tower 42/NatWest Building, City of London 600 feet, 43 stories Heron Tower, City of London (approved) 600 feet, 42 stories Vauxhall Tower, St. George's Wharf, Lambeth (proposed) 593 feet, 49 stories 30 St Mary Axe, City of London (under construction) 590 feet, 41 stories Crossharbour Tower, Greenwich (proposed) 532 feet, 53 stories One Churchill Place, Canary Wharf (under construction) 513 feet, 32 stories 25 Bank Street, Heron Quays, Canary Wharf (under construction) 502 feet, 33 stories 40 Bank Street, Heron Quays, Canary Wharf (under construction) 502 feet, 33 stories 10 Upper Bank Street, Heron Quays, Canary Wharf (under construction) 495 feet, 32 stories Guy's Hospital Tower, Southwark 469 feet, *34 stories 70 Marsh Wall, Tower Hamlets (proposed) 457 feet, 46 stories One Croydon Gateway, Tower Hamlets (approved, same site as 70 Marsh Wall) 443 feet, 30 stories British Airways London Eye, Lambeth 443 feet West End Green, City of Westminster (proposed) 436 feet, 28 stories New Wembley Stadium, Brent (under construction) 436 feet Grand Union Building, Paddington (approved) 433 feet, 29 stories City Point, City of London 417 feet, 36 stories Millennium Hotel, Millennium Dome site, Greenwich (proposed) 417 feet, floor count remains to be determined Euston Tower, Camden 408 feet, 36 stories Shakespeare Flats, Barbican Centre, City of London 404 feet, 43 stories Lauderdale Flats, Barbican Centre, City of London 404 feet, 43 stories Cromwell Flats, Barbican Centre, City of London 404 feet, 42 stories (Edited by TLOZ Link5 at 6:00 pm on Aug. 1, 2003)
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#11
August 1st, 2003, 10:07 PM
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The Shard of Glass
Quote:
I also think of TSF when I think of LBT. They also are similar in how they are vertically organized. Both towers use areas along their heights to collect light and bring it into the tower's mass. There is still a chance that TSF might get built... so says Nouvel as late as 2001. He and Piano are among the greatest. Zumthor too, but he has yet to do a tall building.
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#12
August 2nd, 2003, 07:21 PM
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The Shard of Glass
Isn't the building outside of the so-called "lines of sight?" *I mean, Guy's Tower is only a few blocks away from it; not to mention that most of the tall buildings proposed for The City have not been opposed by EH either. *They derided the original design as "a spike through the heart of London," but Piano, as mentioned before, revised--even improved--his design to compromise with them. *I think LBT has an incredibly good chance of being built.
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#14
September 7th, 2003, 04:59 AM
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I'd be happy if they plopped this in Downtown Manhattan.
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#15
September 7th, 2003, 02:34 PM
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Quote:
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