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IT WAS SUBJECT TO A PUBLIC ENQUIRY AND WON AN UNEQUIVOCAL VICTORY THAT HAS PAVED THE WAY FOR LONDON'S NEW SKYSCRAPER-FILLED SKYLINE. BUT THE SHARD IS SO MUCH MORE TO ITS ARCHITECT RENZO PIANO, SAYS HERBERT WRIGHT SHARD PHOTOGRAPHY BY PAUL RAFTERY RENZO PIANO PORTRAIT BY DAVID VINTINER
Renzo Piano knows how to make buildings that vanish. Two current projects, one a crystalline tower over London that shatters outdated ideas about what a skyscraper is and about the metropolis it stands in, the other an intervention at the timeless site of Le Corbusier's Ronchamp chapel, both do it.
One disappears into the sky, the other into the earth, and both cunningly use angles. ? little trick', Piano intimates, as he enters a room at the Paris offices of his practice RPBW, brandishing a photo from an online forum of Shard observers. It shows a surprisingly narrow, angular finger of light tapering into the sky blue, but on either side, the tower's form simply merges with it. 'Like a kaleidoscope that reflects the sky! ' bubbles Piano. 'You can spend a day in front of it and it wiii never be the same
Piano, now 72, is charm and tact embodied, a kindly guru in a woolly jumper that's so sky blue that the Shard could well disappear into it. He is as high on ideas as if they were pills he'd popped. He flatters those he talks with, offering thoughts like intimacies, and frequently responding 'you are right'. The charisma he deploys on developers, mayors and press around the world indicates another characteristic - deep patience.
Ever since 2001 he's been telling the same story to evangelise London's 306m-high Shard, just now finishing construction - but, he says, it's 'a good story'. For him, the mixed-use skyscraper tells 'the way the city may save land, instead of dispersing, the idea that the city can grow from inside'. He talks about exploiting public transport hubs, and the idea of 'making a building that can intensify the city of London, especially in a place that needs life, without adding traffic. [Then London Mayor] Ken Livingstone was brilliant. He asked me not put more than 48 parking spaces. 48 is nothing!' (It's actually the minimum required for...