The Shard — the tallest building in Western Europe, tapering up into a glass point above you — wasn't even supposed to be called that. Its official name during planning was the far more boring "London Bridge Tower." When the developers took their plans to a public inquiry in two thousand two, the heritage body English Heritage formally objected. They called the design "a shard of glass through the heart of historic London." The developers adopted the insult as the official name almost immediately — the single cleanest example of a building winning an argument by agreeing with it. And the whole idea started on a napkin. In March of the year two thousand, developer Irvine Sellar met the architect Renzo Piano for lunch in Berlin to pitch him on designing a tower at London Bridge. Piano looked out at the river and the railway lines below. In his signature green felt pen, he sketched the whole idea directly onto a restaurant napkin — a shard of glass rising out of the water. Sellar says he
still has it, framed, in his office. An entire skyline landmark, designed in the time it takes to eat lunch.
Before any of this, the site held a thoroughly unremarkable nineteen seventies office block called Southwark Towers — twenty-four ordinary storeys nobody would recognize a photograph of today. It was demolished specifically to make way for the tower you're looking at now. That's the closes
