The Shard which is to contain more than half a million square feet of London office space, will eventually reach more than a thousand feet above ground level and should be completed less than two years from now.
Architect Renzo Piano found room for a number of residential apartments, retail space and restaurants, as well as office space, at the central London site which is on one side of the well-known London Bridge.
The heavily developed Docklands area of the city had until recently laid claim to the tallest building in England with One Canada Square in Canary Wharf reaching up to 770ft, but the still-to-be-finished Shard has already surpassed that mark and is on course to be the highest structure in the European Union.
Significant financial backing was required to turn the Shard project into a reality and the relevant developers received roughly £2 billion worth of investment from a quartet of Qatari businesses back in 2008.
Elsewhere in the capital, the accountancy firm KPMG recently had its new office space headquarters in Canary Wharf opened by the Queen and British Land revealed its plan to build an iconic new skyscraper in the City of London with the help of Oxford Properties.
Editor’s notes: As of May 2023, there is a wide range of flexible office space workspace solutions available at both The Shard and One Canada Square.
These offer an alternative to renting office space on a conventional leasehold basis and include private services offices, managed office suites and corporate coworking membership plans.
Flexible workspace providers The Office Group provide these solutions at both properties.