THE SHARD DESIGN BY RENZO PIANO BUILDING WORKSHOP
THE
SHARD DESIGN BY RENZO PIANO BUILDING WORKSHOP
The
London Bridge Tower, also known as the Shard, is a 72-storey, mixed-use tower
located beside London Bridge Station on the south bank of the river Thames.
This project was a response to the urban vision of London Mayor Ken Livingstone
and to his policy of encouraging high-density development at key transport
nodes in London. This sort of sustainable urban extension relies on the
proximity of public transportation, discourages car use and helps to reduce
traffic congestion in the city.
A mix
of uses – residential, offices and retail – creates a building that is in use
24 hours a day. The slender, pyramidal form of the tower was determined by its
suitability to this mix: large floor plates at the bottom for offices;
restaurants, public spaces and a hotel located in the middle; private
apartments at the top of the building. The final floors accommodate a public
viewing gallery, 240 m above street level. This arrangement of functions also
allows the tower to taper off and disappear into the sky, a particularly
important detail for RPBW given the building’s prominence on the London skyline.
Eight
sloping glass facades, the “shards”, define the shape and visual quality of the
tower, fragmenting the scale of the building and reflecting the light in
unpredictable ways. Opening vents in the gaps or “fractures” between the
shards, provide natural ventilation to winter gardens.
The
extra-white glass used on the Shard gives the tower a lightness and a
sensitivity to the changing sky around it, the Shard’s colour and mood are
constantly changing. It required a particular technical solution to ensure the
facade’s performance in terms of controlling light and heat. A double-skin,
naturally ventilated facade with internal blinds that respond automatically to
changes in light levels was developed. The logic is very simple: external
blinds are very effective in keeping solar gain out of a building, but
unprotected external blinds are not appropriate for a tall building, hence the
extra layer of glass facade on the outside.
As part
of the project, a section of London Bridge Station’s concourse was also
redeveloped and the London Bridge Tower has been the stimulus for much of the
regeneration of the surrounding area, now known as the London Bridge quarter.
Consultants: Arup ( Structure & Service ) and more...
http://www.rpbw.com/project/58/london-bridge-tower/
INTERVIEW
BETWEEN RENZO PIANO & MARCUS FAIRS
Marcus
Fairs: How did the Shard project come about?
Renzo
Piano: It was [Arup structural
engineer] Tony Fitzpatrick who called and said do you want to meet somebody?
And that somebody was [developer] Irvine Sellar [of Sellar Property Group]. We met in Berlin. I
was quite attracted by the idea of… not really of making a tall building, but
the idea of making a mixed-use tower – a vertical city.
It was
also clear that this tower was sitting in the centre of a crossing system of
different transportation – trains, buses and all that. So it was typical of
work we have done in the past about brownfields – how to intensity life in the
city. The philosophy topping the expansion of the city by explosion and
starting implosion. Growth of the city from inside: filling the holes, filling
the industrial sites, railway sites. And then we started to work.
So that
was the beginning. Why we came up with this [the form of The Shard] is a bit
more difficult. The most important thing that attracted us was this idea of
mixing use, and the fact that it was sitting in a vital place of interchange.
It provided an excellent occasion to show that you could provide life in a city
without increasing the traffic – by using public transportation.
The
first time I met [then London mayor] Ken Livingstone in London it was clear Ken
was happy about this. It fell perfectly within his philosophy. So finally our
philosophy, the client’s philosophy, Ken’s philosophy and the city’s philosophy
were coming together. It was quite fortunate.
Then
the next thing is if you have to put mixed use – if you have to put together
office space, hotel space and residential space, you understand very quickly
that for the office you need that big platform [gesturing with hands], for the
hotel you need that big and for the houses you need that big. So if you need
that that and that, what is the shape you end up with?
In some
ways it is difficult to clarify between the conscious and the subconscious –
between rationality and instinct – but in some way this idea of something
starting fat and becoming small was a rational and instinctive process.
Rational because it made sense from the beginning. Instinctive because it
became clear that the only way to make something elegant was to not fill the
sky – to make something slim.
Was
the shape a formal decision or did it come through sketching?
No it
also came by sketching, and also by making models. I made a joke the first time
Irvine came to the office; I picked up in the workshop a shard – not of glass
but of wood. A splinter. I made a joke about it. actually it was quite
immediate. If I’m not wrong, even that day in Berlin – this may be part of
Irvine Sellar mythology – he reminded me last time that during the lunch I
picked up a pencil and I started sketching. We talked from the beginning that
was quite wide here and then less and less and less this idea of doing
something that was probably breaking the scale and coming up in this position,
having an observation deck here, certainly public space here, housing from here
to here, hotel from here to here, office here… this thing came very quickly.
As
quickly as you just drew it?
Yeah,
something like that. But I don’t want to create a mythology. Then of course it
became quite evident from the first sketches that from that height up
[indicates upper levels of the building] you have quite a lot of wind and you
are not going to be able to use the space when you come down below 50sq m [per
floor], so we started to come up with the idea of the radiator [the finned
heat-transfer device that topped the building in early iterations but which has
since been replaced by a series of public viewing galleries].
It’s
a glass building – and glass buildings are not renowned for their energy
efficiency.
As you
know we are aiming to save a lot of energy. Actually that is what we have done
in Sydney; the Aurora
Place tower that was finished five or six years ago actually
saves one third of the energy by the previous building there. There we used the
breeze in the winter garden, and chemicals in the glass. Glass technology has
changed immensely.
We are
working on different things. One is that because it’s a mixed use, we have
extra production of heat from the offices that we can reuse in the residential
part. This is un-poetic but it is very intelligent.
The
other thing is the composition of the glass. We are working with double glass –
actually triple glass – with a space in between where we have lamellas –
venetian blinds – that cut heat gain from the sun. And when you don’t have
sun – which happens in London – you can lift up the lamella. They are inside
the glass. Of course the air between the two panes of glass heats up, but then
we evacuate it and reuse it.
So the
composition of the façade is part of the mystery, part of the story. And we are
working on a chemical glass with a composition… the blinds are better than
tinted glass. You can see them. At night they will disappear. There will be
some facets that will probably not even have lamella. It’s like the trunk of a
tree, acting differently all the way round, depending on how much sun it gets.
The south side will not be the same as the north.
We
don’t use mirror glass or tinted glass. We use new technology which is more
subtle. The language of the building will depend on this. We will use clear
glass – low iron glass. It’s also called extra white glass in England. This is
very different from regular glass, which is very green. If you use low iron
glass you end up with something that really is like a crystal. So depending on
the day, the light and the position of the sun, the building will look
different. It will not look like a massive glass meteorite - choom! - as many
towers do. It’s going to be more vibrant and changing.
How
do you ensure that such a tall building compliments, rather than damages, the
city it sits in?
That’s
a good question. Towers usually have a very bad reputation - and normally a
deserved reputation, because they are normally a symbol of arrogance and power.
In other words the story towers normally tell are not very nice; not very
subtle. They are just about power and money. But the idea of a tower is
not just a bad one. In this case the desire to go up is not really to break any
record – it is to breathe fresh air. It is to go up to enjoy the atmosphere. So
I think the first point about serenity is more that the building is not
struggling to be powerful. It’s actually quite gentle. Especially as from the
street the building is not like that but is like that, and as a consequence it
will reflect the sky.
All
this is about doing a building that is not arrogant. I don’t think arrogance
will be a character of this building. I think its presence will be quite
subtle. Sharp but subtle. This doesn’t mean you have to lose presence and
intensity. I think the building will be intense – it’s not timid.
http://www.dezeen.com/2012/05/18/interview-renzo-piano-on-the-shard/
‘’ I
always thought this tower will be a sensor of the city, reflecting the mood.
What the Shard does for London is a list of things. I was aware of risks with
the project when I took it on, but the best things in life are always a little
dangerous. ‘’
Renzo Piano
INTERVIEW
BETWEEN RENZO PIANO & MARCUS FAIRS
Marcus
Fairs: In an
interview a few years ago you said “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 Sienna; this power can be put to good civic use, not just to make
developers rich.” Do you believe that?
Renzo
Piano: I went through this exercise a number of times
including at a conference at the RIBA when everybody was talking about adding
towers to London. And I said I don’t think London is a city of towers. I think
Manhattan is a city of towers, it makes sense there. I don’t think London is a
city of towers and I don’t think the only way of intensifying life in the city
is by making towers. I don’t think growth by implosion – rather than explosion
at the periphery – necessarily means building towers. The city of London, where
the buildings normally making the city are two or three floors, you can easily
increase the density of the city without making towers.
In
London I don’t see many many places where you can make towers. Also if you
build a tower, you cast a shadow. The funny thing is that here our shadow is
cast on the river. We don’t cast a shadow …
You are
sitting above a great hub of transportation. There are many things that make
this building possible there and not somewhere else. I think this is one of the
few positions where you can have towers.
But
the tallest tower in Europe?
First,
Marcus, it will only be the tallest for a few weeks! I’m joking. It’s not the
highest because we have been struggling to make it the highest. It’s not the
highest when you stop here. We didn’t try to beat any record.
But I
think you are touching something very important, which is the discussion about
style, the griffe, the recognisable gesture. I believe this is part of
the star system of architects but its not a good story for architecture because
it doesn’t celebrate architecture but celebrates the architects. I think in the
end is not good for architecture because in the end it limits the freedom. You
as an architect – let's assume you have a certain success; you are always
pushed to repeat yourself. It’s not just true for architects; it’s also true
for painters, writers, film makers. If you do something, people will ask you to
do it again. But this is not a good story; this is a lack of freedom.
Everybody
talks about a lack of freedom but probably the most difficult freedom to keep
is not from other people but from yourself. Freedom from other people is quite
easy; if you have a tough group of people working together as we are –
honestly, we defend our freedom quite well – but the most dangerous freedom to
defend is the one with yourself. Because you get used, you become
self-referential, because things go well. So you fall in the big trap, which is
the one of recognisable signature. The idea that you do things this way. So
immediately people say that is Pierre Cardin, Hermes or whatever. I’m not
saying this to be a moralist; I hate this idea of a repetitive gesture or a
self-referential attitude; I hate this idea of being trapped by the need to
promote your griffe – your label – but at the
same time I love the idea of coherence. I love the idea that an architect has their
own language. We have to constantly fight against the temptation to repeat
yourself.
You
come from a family of builders. How did this affect your architecture?
Architecture
is not construction. Architecture is art, but art vastly contaminated by many
other things. Contaminated in the best sense of the word – fed, fertilised by
many things. But I came to this attitude that architecture is art starting as a
builder.
And
this was good because it kept me away from academia when I was young. When you
are young as an architect you are always in danger of falling in to the
trap of academia. Academia is the attitude to make shape without knowing enough
about the bottom part of the iceberg. But if you become more humble – in 62 and
63, I was sleeping more in the university of Milan than in my bed. It is true,
I came from a family of builders but I also came from a very strong social
experience of community life. Living with other people, changing the world,
sleeping on the bloody bench in the university. So this funny mix, this funny
bouillabaisse of emotion is very rich.
So it’s
stupid to say that coming from a family of builders was a good thing in itself
because you can learn later on, but it was good because it kept me away from
formality. From academia, from the easy pleasure of creating form.
Academia
not just in architecture but writing, painting, music – everything that is done
without rebellion. And when you are young it is very dangerous. When I was
young student, the Italian system was highly academic. Like in France. France
now is different; but don’t forget the École des Beaux-Arts has been spoiling
architects for ages. Creating pseudo-artistic architects. So in some way my
origins of a builder family kept me away from this. And it kept me away from being
too easily trapped in the pleasure of gesture.
The Centre
Georges Pompidou [the building Piano won
at competition with Richard Rogers in 1971, launching both of their careers, and which famously
features service pipes and ducts on the outside] could have been such a style
trap for you.
At
first, people think you will spend your entire life making pipes! And they ask
you to make pipes. This is also true for artists. If you take a great artist
like Giacometti, for example. Giacometti spent the last ten years repeating the
same thing – because he was asked to repeat the same thing. The poor guy – he
was so nice and gentle that he did. It was not nasty – he was not doing it to
make money or whatever, it was just a trap he fell in.
Architecture
is by definition a discipline – of course it is artistic, it is scientific,
social discipline – but it is a discipline where the adventurous side is very
strong, because every job is a new adventure. This is a completely different
adventure from making the Paul
Klee museum in Bern. It is completely different. How can you
tell such a different story with the same language? How can you worry about
that? But you don’t have to worry if you have an internal coherence. This will
come anyway. But if you start worrying then you fall in the trap. Instead of
being free, you worry that is not essential, which is “how will people
recognise that it is mine”.
What
is your internal coherence?
Marcus,
I don’t care but people keep telling me that they recognise it. There was a guy
who went to see one of our buildings but he didn’t know it was one of ours. If
there is something there that is coherent… if you ask me what are the traces of
this, I think more than always using the same material, always the same rhythm,
it is more about a desire for lightness for example, for transparency, for
vibration.
It’s
not so different from what we are trying to do with the New York Times[building in New York, which
features a curtain wall of ceramic tubes]. The poetic desire behind this is
similar – it’s about vibration, about becoming part of the atmosphere,
metamorphosis. Lightness, transparency, maybe tension between the place and the
built object.
There
are certain characteristics. I don’t think I should worry about it, but some
critics tell us and they normally talk about this – the emotion of a space
being built up also by immateriality. This is not my idea –[architecture
critic] Rayner Banham discussed the well-tempered environment. The idea that
architecture is sometimes built up by immateriality: light, transparency, long
perspective, vibration, colour, tension. I prefer to dig in this quarry rather
in the repetition of certain gestures.
Look, I
was lucky enough to be educated when I was a young architect in Milan to
explore the cities, to put my hand into science, utopia, to change the world.
That’s the kind of thing you do when you are young – rebellion. Don’t forget,
rebellion, when you are young, is the cheapest way to find yourself. However,
how can you accept when you are 60 years old the humiliation of having a style.
Of being grabbed by commercial obligation. It’s a humiliation; it’s insulting.
As an architect this is what you have to aim [for]. This kind of freedom –
maybe you will never change the world but you have to believe you can otherwise
you are lost.
So
every time you get a new job, the way you approach it is by saying ah… but how
can you humiliate yourself by saying no, no, no, forget it; first, how can we
make ourselves recognisable.
So
if someone came to you and said “I want a building with pipes on the outside”,
what would you say?
I would
laugh. You know there is a moment in your life when people don’t come any more
to say silly things like that. We are in a very privileged position to be able
to decide what to do.
But a
challenge like this has a very deep root in the history of a city, in the
history of science, so there is a kind of utopia here. It’s not just a formal
gesture. Even the little idea of a vertical city, mixed use, intensify life
without adding new cars. You realise we have forty-seven cars in this building
[The Shard]. The car park is for forty-seven cars! Not 4,000. This is also
because Ken Livingstone also said don’t even add … just for handicapped people
and that kind of use.
So
there are many many things here that are the invisible parts of architecture.
It’s a bit like an iceberg. The invisible part is what I call the social vision
for a city, the context and things like that. It’s very strongly there. Unless
you do this, architecture becomes very quickly an academic exercise; a formal
exercise.
Many
people claim the Centre Georges Pompidou was the first building in the
“high-tech” style. Was that building a formal exercise?
In
reality it is quite an ironic building. It is not a real spaceship – it is a
Jules Verne spaceship. It’s really more a parody of technology than technology.
It was just a direct and quite innocent way to express the difference between
the intimidating cultural institutions like they normally were in the 60s and
70s - especially in this city [Paris, where his studio is based] – and the
modern building, very open and a curious relationship with people. The idea was
that it doesn’t intimidate. We were young bad boys and we liked that.
But the
Beaubourg is not really the triumph of technology. It’s more about the joy of
life. It’s a rebellion.
Are
you still rebellious?
Mmmmmm.
in some ways yes. But you should not ask me, you should ask my wife.
http://www.dezeen.com/2012/05/18/interview-renzo-piano-on-the-shard/
‘’ The
Shard is an icon, a destination in itself. It represents a new generation of
office building that is more interested in effectiveness than efficiency. Its
offices aren’t places in which to sit and just crunch numbers. Instead, they’re
places where 21st-century ‘knowledge’ workers can collaborate with each other,
make connections, think, socialise and use their creativity effectively. These
representatives of the information age – typically employed by media companies,
publishing houses, law firms etc – need a new type of working environment.
Fifty or 60 years ago, most offices were clerical factories, where people were
doing ‘process’ work – organising things, doing paperwork. Nowadays, we don’t
need to come to an office to find data or access phone lines; we can get our
emails on our mobiles, download data onto our tablets and laptops. Information
is up in the cloud. Organisations have to develop a new type of office
landscape and think about their workspace in radically different ways. ‘’
Professor Jeremy Myerson
RENZO PIANO BUILDING WORKSHOP
Renzo
Piano Building Workshop company profile The Renzo Piano Building Workshop
(RPBW) is an international architectural practice with offices in Paris and
Genoa.
The
Workshop is led by 13 partners, including founder and Pritzker Prize laureate,
architect Renzo Piano. The company permanently employs nearly 130 people. Our
90-plus architects are from all around the world, each selected for their
experience, enthusiasm and calibre.
The
company’s staff has the expertise to provide full architectural design
services, from concept design stage to construction supervision. Our design
skills also include interior design, town planning and urban design, landscape
design and exhibition design services.
Since
its formation in 1981, RPBW has successfully undertaken and completed over 120
projects across Europe, North America, Australasia and East Asia. Among its
best known works are: the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas; the Kansai
International Airport Terminal Building in Osaka; the Kanak Cultural Center in
New Caledonia; the Beyeler Foundation in Basel; the Rome Auditorium; the Maison
Hermès in Tokyo; the Morgan Library and the New York Times Building in New York
City; and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Recently
completed works include the Shard in London, and the new Whitney Museum in New
York.
The
quality of RPBW’s work has been recognised by over 70 design awards, including
major awards from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Royal
Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
In all
our work we aim to address the specific features and potential of a particular
situation, embracing them into the project while responding to the requirements
of the program. We continue to push the limits of building technology –
innovating, refining and experimenting – to come up with the very best solution
for each situation.
Our
method of working is highly participatory, with clients, engineers and
specialist consultants all contributing from the beginning of a project and
throughout the design process.
Our
approach to design is not strictly conventional and involves the use of
physical models and one-to-one scale mockups to help test and develop our
proposed design concepts. We also believe that the design process is not linear
and that it requires architects to think and draw on different scales at the
same time, considering each finished detail in the development of the overall
design.
RENZO PIANO
Chairman. Founding Partner. Architect DPLG based at Paris
Office.
Renzo Piano was born in Genoa in 1937 into a
family of builders.
While studying at Politecnico of Milan
University, he worked in the office of Franco Albini.
In 1971, he set up the “Piano & Rogers”
office in London together with Richard Rogers, with whom he won the competition
for the Centre Pompidou. He subsequently moved to Paris.
From the early 1970s to the 1990s, he worked
with the engineer Peter Rice, sharing the Atelier Piano & Rice from 1977 to
1981.
In 1981, the “Renzo Piano Building Workshop” was
established, with 150 staff and offices in Paris, Genoa, and New York.
He has received numerous awards and recognitions
among which: the Royal Gold Medal at the RIBA in London (1989), the Kyoto Prize
in Kyoto, Japan (1990), the Goodwill Ambassador of UNESCO (1994), the Praemium
Imperiale in Tokyo, Japan (1995), the Pritzker Architecture Prize at the White
House in Washington (1998), the Leone d’oro alla Carriera in Venice (2000), the
Gold Medal AIA in Washington (2008) and the Sonning Prize in Copenhagen (2009).
Since 2004 he has also been working for the
Renzo Piano Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of
the architectural profession through educational programs and educational
activeities. The new headquarters was established in Punta Nave (Genoa), in
June 2008.
In September 2013 Renzo Piano was appointed
senator for life by the Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and in May 2014 he
received the Columbia University Honorary Degree.
http://www.rpbw.com/en/architecture/3/the-firm/5/team/
