London’s Shard Controversy: Sky-High Beauty or Symbol of Division?
Diving Deep into the City’s Towering Debate on Urban Class Disparities
Fronting the River Thames to the north, the district of Southwark forms one of the oldest parts of London. As quantified by the Index of Multiple Deprivation in 2004, Southwark was ranked to be the third most deprived borough in terms of employment. One decade later in 2023, it was considered the fourth most deprived (Southwark Stats). Extensive regeneration in the area has most notably taken form through the construction of large office blocks. The redevelopment of Southwark did not come without consequences, however, as the minutes of a council meeting on April 2007 reveal, “Many local people feel marginalized by the recent gentrification of the area, and their only hope is Charterhouse-in-Southwark charity” (Borough and Bankside).
Formerly known as London Bridge Tower, The Shard is a bold characterization of the most recent gentrification seen in Southwark. In its current state, The Shard fails to be sensitive to the heterotopic ideals of a city, and as a result, perpetuates an ongoing peripheralization of the lower classes of London, in particular the people of Southwark. This lack of sensitivity is inherently revealed through the building’s aesthetic style, accessibility traits, and vertical development.
In What Is a City, Lewis Mumford argues that a city (and indeed a building) is a theatre for social interaction, and like the stage setting of good play, emphasizes, exaggerates or improves upon the performance of the city’s inhabitants. “Architecture and urban design may not determine human behaviour, but bad design can numb the human spirit and good design can have powerful, positive influences on human beings” (Mumford 90). He argues that designers should seek to incorporate elements which foster community and human interaction. The Shard’s lack of sensitivity towards Mumford’s heterotopic ideologies effectively discourages inclusion and public participation, and as AnnMarie Brennan portrays through her analysis of Italian cinema, peripheralizes the people of Southwark.
The aesthetic style of The Shard does not integrate well with the surrounding cultural and architectural heritage of Southwark, and the building is quite conspicuous as a result. Due to a lack of sensitivity towards the area’s existing character, The Shard has become a constant physical reminder of the omnipresent class distinctions present in Southwark. “In fact, the best thing about The Shard is that it makes such an explicit statement about power, about who matters and who doesn’t” (Hartley). Hartley is suggesting that The Shard’s lack of sensitivity to its surrounding aesthetics further facilitates London’s growing class divisions. Consequently, this serves as a visual and symbolic reminder of the vast wealth disparity among Londoners, which only further peripheralizes the lower classes of London.
The Shard’s domination of the London skyline miniaturizes the surrounding buildings. “Stabbed into the historic fabric of a city that has never been built especially tall, dwarfing Southwark Cathedral and such nearby landmarks as Tower Bridge, the Monument and even Tate’s converted power station, it seems a lunatic attack on London” (Jones). Jones forcefully argues that this oversized, out of context building belittles the structures which represent the heritage of London, and hence the people of London. Jones believes The Shard to reflect an arrogant and disrespectful assault on London’s architectural fabric and by association, those less affluent Londoners who are not the intended audience for the glassy structure. The Shard’s poor characterization of the traditional aesthetic style associated with London is representative of globalization. By developing faster than the rest of the city, The Shard exaggerates the ongoing gentrification of Southwark.
The Shard’s accessibility traits are insensitive to the heterotopic needs of Southwark, and therefore perpetuate further marginalization in London. While personally travelling to The Shard on May 11th, 2014, I was unable to gain access to any portion of the building due to a very strict dress policy. After visiting The Shard, I came to the conclusion that while the building understands its location on the map, it tries to act incognisant of the surrounding classes, and as a result peripheralizes the vast majority of Londoners. The residential flats in The Shard are mostly reserved for Qatar royalty, and those that are available to Londoners are far too expensive for non-executive classes. As George Arbuthnot and Andrew Buckwell note, “Ten properties at The Shard in Central London are expected to fetch between £30 million and £50 million each, and will be the first to offer their owners a view of the sea from the capital — on a clear day, at least” (Arbuthnot).
The Shard’s poor accessibility imposes the notion of exclusiveness on Southwark, and this notion perpetuates the ongoing marginalization of certain classes in London. Moreover, the building’s exclusive nature does not reflect the heterotopic ideologies of a city, which effectively discourages social mixing within the community. This contradicts Lewis Mumford’s ideologies of good design: “Of the many values designers seek to build into their designs perhaps none is more important than fostering community and human interaction” (Mumford 90). The discouragement of inclusion and public participation imposed by the building is demonstrative of The Shard’s lack of sensitivity towards Mumford’s philosophical principles; the building does not enhance the stage on which life’s drama is played out.
Renzo Piano, the architect of The Shard, often categorizes the building as a community within Southwark. He “describes The Shard, which is his first British commission, as a ‘vertical town’, a multi-use community centre in the sky” (Bradbury). However, The Shard’s exclusive foundation assures that the aforementioned ‘community centre’ is not actually accessible to its community. One may wonder why a city would be interested in building a community centre in Southwark which is inaccessible to its own people. The Shard is symbolic of the disparagement of the people of Southwark, and embodies the arrogant and insensitive city that London is becoming.
The intrinsic vertical development of The Shard has greatly intensified city life around the building, resulting in further marginalization of the people of Southwark. Piano says that in order to positively develop a city, you should intensify the city from the inside, instead of building more buildings (Leclézio). However, my personal experience from ground level suggests the contrary; the traffic and population density have increased greatly, resulting in large congestion patterns surrounding the building. Journalist Mélissa Leclézio examined the positive and negative effects associated with these aforementioned developments:
The real challenge will be the effect of the building on street level, and especially the impact it will have on city dwellers living and working in the neighbourhood. One can only hope that Sellar’s ambitious ideas of social integration, increased use of public transportation and vertical development of the city will not prove to be the mere fantasies of a lunatic. (Leclézio)
She suggests that from the street level, the area may become overcrowded, and negatively affect the people of Southwark, peripheralizing them further. In fact, the city is cognisant of the hypertrophied urban mass that currently surrounds London Bridge Station and plans to rebuild parts of the station by 2018 to facilitate congestion concerns. However, as with most municipal redevelopment, delays are not uncommon. Nevertheless, until the city accommodates the associated implications of the vertical village model, the people of Southwark will continue to be marginalized. This directly coincides with Mumford’s philosophical model on city size limitations:
Limitations on size, density, and area are absolutely necessary to effective social intercourse; and they are therefore the most important instruments of rational economic and civic planning. The unwillingness in the past to establish such limits has been due mainly to two facts: the assumption that all upward changes in magnitude were signs of progression and automatically ‘good for businesses’, and the belief that such limitations were essentially arbitrary, in that they proposed to ‘decrease economic opportunity’. (Mumford 95)
London is falling into the same trap that Mumford clearly defined many years ago. Consequently, the city is becoming hypertrophied and dysfunctional. In the article, Life at the Periphery: The Urban Politics of Neorealism in Post-War Rome, AnnMarie Brennan describes the effects of peripheralization by analysing districts, landmarks, paths and thresholds as portrayed through Italian cinema. In the film Mamma Roma, Brennan examines the effects of social mixing within different classes of a district:
Mamma Roma’s hope for a better life hinges upon living within a district of Rome where she is surrounded by others with similar class aspirations. Her upward social mobility is not enough to overcome their doomed existence within this area of Rome where the laws of destiny will not allow them to belong…He attempted to illustrate the ugly nature of what he saw as the rise of petty individualism and express the tragic sentiment that “no sooner do marginal cultures come into contact with the centre than they are destroyed” (Viano 1993: 85)”. (Brennan 71)
Brennan is suggesting that individualism is the root cause of marginalization within cities, and that social mixing within a community dooms the existence of the lower classes. By placing Mamma Roma within a higher class, the laws of destiny will eventually expose the weak, and more powerful individuals within the community will perpetuate an imposition of stratification and inequality. The implications of Brennan’s statement echoes the fact that just like Mamma Roma, the people of Southwark are being marginalized and doomed by forcing them to live alongside the social elitism and high-class superiority associated with The Shard.
Expressed through its inherent aesthetic style, lack of accessibility, and its dramatic vertical development, The Shard imposes a noticeable class divide on Southwark. Although the building may be cognisant of the heterotopic ideologies of a city, it fails to be sensitive towards them, and consequently perpetuates the marginalization of London’s lower classes. By The Shard ignoring the philosophical ideologies laid out by Mumford, Brennan asserts that the implications of its design produce peripheralization. On reflection, the contradicting model imposed by The Shard symbolizes a nostalgic era of globalization, and represents the most arrogant and petty form of individualism seen within a community, dooming the survival of lower classes.
Works cited
Arbuthnot, George. Buckwell, Andrew. “Shacking up in The Shard: The London flats with a sea view… but only on a VERY clear day, and it’ll cost you up to £50m”. Mail Online. 5 May, 2012. Web. 05 June 2014.
Bradbury, Dominic. “The Shard: its architect’s view”. The Telegraph. The Telegraph Media Group. 19 Nov 2011. Web. 05 June 2014.
Brennan, AnnMarie. Life at the Periphery: The urban politics of Neorealism in post-war Rome. Interstices. 12:68–75
“Borough and Bankside Community Council: Minutes Agreement Form”. 23 April 2007, Charles Dickens School, Lant Street, London SE1. Southwark. Web.
Hatherley, Owen. “Skylines: Opinions on Renzo Piano’s Shard, London”. The Architectural Review. Emap Construct. 24 July 2012. Web. 05 June 2014.
Jones, Jonathan. “The Shard is a broken society’s towering achievement.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. 19 August 2011. Web. 05 June 2014.
Leclézio, Mélissa. “Renzo Piano’s Shard: Blessing or Curse for Londoners?”. London: the best of its art and culture. n.d. Web. 05 June 2014.
Levete, Amanda. “Skylines: Opinions on Renzo Piano’s Shard, London”. The Architectural Review. Emap Construct. 24 July 2012. Web. 05 June 2014.
Mumford, Lewis. What is a City? London: Routledge: The City Reader en Richard, 1996. Print.
Southwark Stats. “Southwark Health and Wellbeing Board: Joint Strategic Needs Assessment”. Southwark Council. Web. 05 June 2014.
