OMG It’s a Shard Show: Renzo Piano’s Newest Skyscraper Opens in London With a LASER LIGHT SHOW!

You’ve just got to see this. One cannot help but think that perhaps, given the real estate reflection battle here in Dallas between the Renzo Piano-designed Nasher and Museum Tower and all the media banter about Museum Tower being a giant laser to the Nasher, that it  inspired the idea for this laser light show that took place at the Shard. Yes, that’s really the name of the building, a shard is a piece of glass: each facet forms a shard, a plane of glass gently inclined inwards, rising towards the top. That’s also the name of a brand new high rise tower in London. It’s Europe’s tallest building, and it sits on London’s south bank, which I understand is not too savory a ‘hood, and it is bloody tall: 1016 feet above the city. Or 72 stories! That’s still shorter than the Empire State Building, but I’m a girl, you don’t have to have the tallest building of them all to impress me. It has 11,000 glass panels… all shards… a real pane to clean ha ha… but 95% of the building’s construction materials are recycled! There are 44 lifts (elevators) and it’s a retail/commercial/residential masterpiece with 10 exclusive residences at the top. Oh boy, will those be pricey, God London real estate?  30 million pounds a flat!  Oh yes, Hotel Shangri-La soaks up the 34th to 52nd floors. Shangri-La at the Shard!

I just got a kick out of the laser-light show they put on to celebrate the opening, which is like today. They are also polishing every inch of the 11,000 window panels to get them squeaky-clean to reflect the sun. That’s right, they WANT the sun’s reflection off a Renzo Piano-designed building. I also like the photos juxtaposing the gleaming new tower with the  historic cathedrals nearby.

Now the Brits are complaining about the cost of a ticket to ride the lift up to the top of the Shard: $87 pounds, or about $134 dollars… wait did I do that right? One pound equals $1.55 U.S. dollars so $87 times $1.55 is $134.85…for an elevator ride in London. Wow. No wonder folks from the U.S. are scooping up U.S. real estate.We’re like Wal Mart!