The Shard: London's fat lady?

I can see its twinkling red lights from my bedroom window in north London, as it nears completion. By day I glimpse it from my bike sometimes on the skyline, sometimes in the middle distance.

Yesterday I happened much closer to the Shard – so close that I could feel the evolving cold wind tunnel that seems to be establishing in streets it overhangs.

From a distance the Shard is graceful, inflicting a kind of scale on everything that went before – from the BT Tower, to the Gherkin. But close up, as the sheath of glass spikes the freezing fog above, the emphasis is on the Shard below the waist.

From ground level, it is far from a thing of beauty. Fat billowing glass skirts mount the sides of the building, presumably rooting the great thing deep into the ground. It is so fat that it appears to occupy every square inch of land about it, butting hard on to buildings and streets.

Not an area of outstanding beauty I’ll confess, but an area nonetheless. And who can mourn the invasion of the erstwhile dominance of neighbouring Guys Hospital tower?

Is the trade off for distant grace, such a base? From the very bottom looking up, the Shard conjures the view of a three-year-old child standing outside a supermarket looking up fat ladies dresses as they put their trolleys back. Eventually there’s a rather beautiful head far above – but the in-between could do better!

And that implies no disrespect to fat ladies: from Botticelli to Stanley Spencer and Beryl Cooke, the beauty of the fat lady has been immortalised in art. But I’m not sure any artist will have much joy with the Shard’s bottom.

It’s – ugh, how shall I put it? Not as beautiful as its top.

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