The Shard
The Shard replaced Southwark Towers, a 24-storey office building built on the site in 1975. Renzo Piano was the Shard's architect. Piano is best known for creating Paris’s Pompidou Centre in cooperation with Britain’s Richard Rogers. Piano worked with the architectural firm Broadway Malyan during the planning stage. The tower has 72 floors that can be used for offices, with a viewing gallery and open-air observation deck – the UK's highest – on the 72nd floor, at a height of 245 metres (804 ft). The Shard was designed with an irregular pyramidal shape from the bottom to the top, and is covered entirely in glass. Its structure was completed in April 2012. It opened to the public on 5 July 2012.