The Shard, London

The Shard is the tapering glass skyscraper rising above London Bridge, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano. Its spire-like form gives the building its familiar name, and its angled glazing is intended to catch changing sunlight and sky. The tower stands 309.6 metres high, making it the tallest building in the United Kingdom and Western Europe.

It contains 95 storeys, with offices, homes, hotel accommodation and public viewing spaces within the mixed-use development. Look at the pointed outline and the shifting planes of glass: this is high-tech architecture with a neo-futurist character, conceived as a slender sculpture rather than a conventional tower. The building contains 11,000 panes of glass, covering about 56,000 square metres.

Its observation gallery and open-air deck occupy the 72nd floor, at a height of 244 metres. Construction began in March 2009, the tower was completed structurally on 30 March 2012, and it opened formally on 5 July 2012. The Shard replaced Southwark Towers, the office block that had occupied this site since 1975. Its design also uses a natural-gas combined heat and power plant, which generates electricity and recovers heat for hot water.