London's Skyline is Reshaped by The Shard.

 

The face - and the rate - of London will forever change on February 1st.

The public will be able to see "The Shard" for the first time on that day. properties qatar

The Shard, with its 1,016-foot elongated-pyramid-shape glass façade, is the tallest building in Western Europe, further altering the once-staid London skyline. The Shard, on the other hand, is more than just a structure. It's just an idea.

According to its architect, the renowned Renzo Piano, the aim is to build a multi-use "vertical island" with prestigious offices, world-class restaurants, the city's most exclusive residential address, and the city's highest observatory - The View from The Shard, with an open-air deck offering 360° panoramas of more than sixty miles.

Offices will be located on floors 2-28; trendy restaurants will be located on floors 31-33; the Shangri-la will be located on floors 34-52 (with a five-star ranking, 200 rooms, restaurant, gym, and pool); residences will be located on floors 53-65; and The View will be located on floors 68-72. Despite the fact that the building is 95 stories tall, the Observatory will be the highest occupied floor. The top 18 floors will act as a massive radiator, dissipating the heat produced by the glass structure.

The Shard is located in London Bridge Quarter, in the heart of the city. Every year, 54 million people pass through London Bridge Station, using the underground, mainline, road and water taxis, buses, ferries, cycle and pedestrian routes. Just a few blocks separate London's cultural and financial districts. The Thames Path also passes by cultural landmarks such as the Globe Theatre, Tate Modern, and Southbank Centre.

Renzo Piano says, "This is my vision." "I envision the tower as a vertical community, with thousands of people working and enjoying it, and millions flocking to it."

The Pompidou Centre in Paris was built with Piano's support. He got the idea for The Shard's design in 2000, when sketching on a menu during a lunch meeting about a new tower, according to the company that is building it.

Piano was chastised by English Heritage, which said the building would be "a shard of glass through the heart of historic London," thus inadvertently giving the structure its name. The architect, on the other hand, saw the tower's slender, spire-like shape as a positive addition to the skyline, recalling the city's ancient engravings of church steeples. He proposed angled glass panes that would reflect sunlight and the sky, altering the look of the building as the day progressed. He also included 11,000 glass panes.

The Shard, on the other hand, has had several visitors even before it opens to the public. The self-styled "Place Hackers" evaded protection and made their way to the top in December 2011, scaling a crane to do so. They later uploaded pictures to the internet.

It was announced in April 2012 that several groups of "urban adventurers" had climbed the building and base-jumped from it several times. An Essex roofer is said to have made four jumps and filmed one with a helmet-mounted camera. Security guards spotted Alain Robert, a French urban climber, in the building in November 2012. The owners of the Shard had to go to court to obtain an injunction barring him from entering or scaling the structure. Staff found a fox living on the top floor after finishing the building late last year, who had obviously been feeding on their discarded lunch scraps.

If you think you've seen it all when it comes to thrilling observation towers, check out "The View From The Shard." From there, it seems as if the whole of southern England opens up in front of you.