The Shard - London Bridge - June 2011
Visited with Gone, Millhouse and Nick UK.
Towering over London, Shard stands at around 1016 ft (310 metres) and now dominates the skyline. Said by the project's architect Renzo Piano to look like a shard of glass, its unique form features glass facades that reach up into the sky, twisting inwards to points at the top - which leaves an opening at the top of the building.
When open, Shard will feature a five star hotel, restaurants, a spa, offices, apartments, and a public observatory which will occupy floors 68-72 with the spire making up a the further 75-87.
The building site was well secured and monitored and after doing a quick recce earlier we knew it wasn’t going to be easy. We’d heard that workers could be in 24/7 and with work going on outside London Bridge Station next door it was hard to distinguish what was going on. This one involved a lot of ballsy manoeuvres, and a lot of impromptu decisions while sneaking our way through the site and up to the top core level and then the rooftop crane – nearly 80 storeys up.
Having seen it rise over previous trips, we had all wanted to come back to London to do this and getting up here was an amazing experience. I’m really glad we took our chances
when we did. I distinctly remember the climb not being at all tiring compared to those typically associated with 30-40 storey buildings due to the constant surging of adrenaline and the fact that we never felt safe. Coming back down was equally as unnerving.
As we left the building we got split up and reunited with a massive group hug several blocks away, gazing back up in disbelief of what we had just achieved. We couldn’t even remember where we had parked the car and walked around laughing like idiots for what seemed like ages.
All these were shot from TC1 a few weeks before TC7 took over. I think everyone who did it found it a challenging place to take pictures from. I was never completely happy with mine but it’s nice to be able to show them finally now that shard has achieved its completed status on the London skyline.
Cheers, Sho
Visited with Gone, Millhouse and Nick UK.
Towering over London, Shard stands at around 1016 ft (310 metres) and now dominates the skyline. Said by the project's architect Renzo Piano to look like a shard of glass, its unique form features glass facades that reach up into the sky, twisting inwards to points at the top - which leaves an opening at the top of the building.
When open, Shard will feature a five star hotel, restaurants, a spa, offices, apartments, and a public observatory which will occupy floors 68-72 with the spire making up a the further 75-87.
The building site was well secured and monitored and after doing a quick recce earlier we knew it wasn’t going to be easy. We’d heard that workers could be in 24/7 and with work going on outside London Bridge Station next door it was hard to distinguish what was going on. This one involved a lot of ballsy manoeuvres, and a lot of impromptu decisions while sneaking our way through the site and up to the top core level and then the rooftop crane – nearly 80 storeys up.
Having seen it rise over previous trips, we had all wanted to come back to London to do this and getting up here was an amazing experience. I’m really glad we took our chances
when we did. I distinctly remember the climb not being at all tiring compared to those typically associated with 30-40 storey buildings due to the constant surging of adrenaline and the fact that we never felt safe. Coming back down was equally as unnerving.
As we left the building we got split up and reunited with a massive group hug several blocks away, gazing back up in disbelief of what we had just achieved. We couldn’t even remember where we had parked the car and walked around laughing like idiots for what seemed like ages.
All these were shot from TC1 a few weeks before TC7 took over. I think everyone who did it found it a challenging place to take pictures from. I was never completely happy with mine but it’s nice to be able to show them finally now that shard has achieved its completed status on the London skyline.
Cheers, Sho
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