Shard Place / Renzo Piano Building Workshop

Architects: Renzo Piano Building Workshop
Area: 16,000 m² of residential space
Year: 2025
Photography: Nick Rochowski, Will Pryce
Development Manager: Sellar
Asset/Property Management: Real Estate Management (UK) Limited (REM)
Interior Design: State of Craft
Art Curation: Richeldis Fine Art
Garden Design and Landscaping: Dan Pearson Studio
Engineer: WSP
Contractor: Mace Limited
Lettings Agents: JLL; Knight Frank
Furniture: Bespoke pieces by State of Craft; Cassina Capitol; B&B Italia; Børge Mogensen; Tai Ping; Nanimarquina; Fredericia; Apparatus; Richard Wrightman
City: London Bridge, London
Country: United Kingdom

Shard Place is a residential tower in London Bridge designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop as the final component of the Shard Quarter ensemble. Completed in 2025, the project brings 176 rental apartments to a site immediately adjacent to The Shard, extending the wider regeneration of the area through housing, retail, and public-realm improvements. The homes range from studios to three-bedroom units and are fitted out by State of Craft, with interiors shaped by generous glazing, winter gardens, and a close visual relationship to the city beyond. Curated artworks by Richeldis Fine Art add another layer of domestic refinement throughout the residences and shared spaces. Residents also have access to a broad amenity offering distributed across multiple levels, including wellness, entertainment, dining, and outdoor leisure facilities. Elevated above a new landscaped public space by Dan Pearson Studio, the building is intended not only as a residential address, but also as an urban continuation of the district established by The Shard and The News Building.

Shard Place was driven by the ambition to share a common DNA with the other buildings of the London Bridge Quarter – The Shard and the News Building – while clearly expressing its own residential identity. Achieving this balance between integration within the wider urban composition and the development of a distinct character was central to the design process.
This ambition operates at two complementary scales: the overall massing of the building and the finer articulation of its façades. In terms of height and proportion, an early decision was made to limit the building to no more than one-third of The Shard. This establishes a coherent relationship with the News Building while preserving The Shard’s primacy within the skyline.
Interview with Albert Giralt of Renzo Piano Building Workshop [RPBW]

Shard place / renzo piano building workshop

Shard Place completes the architectural sequence of the Shard Quarter with a residential building that shifts the focus of the London Bridge development from skyline prominence toward long-term inhabitation. Rather than pursuing monumentality alone, the project introduces a more measured urban role, bringing rental housing, retail frontage, and public landscape into a district previously defined above all by commercial and civic scale. In doing so, it extends the logic of the wider masterplan while giving the ensemble a more explicitly domestic dimension.

Designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, the tower rises to 27 storeys and contains 176 apartments offered exclusively for rent. That tenure model is central to the project’s identity. In a part of London where residential development is often framed through ownership and investment, Shard Place instead presents a highly managed form of city living built around service, continuity, and access to shared facilities. The scheme ranges from compact studios to larger three-bedroom homes, with 20 layouts distributed across residences measuring from 425 to 1,486 square feet.

The architectural emphasis falls on light, outlook, and permeability. Floor-to-ceiling glazing opens the apartments to panoramic views across London, while naturally ventilated winter gardens temper the threshold between enclosure and exposure. These elements do more than enhance spectacle. They help structure the everyday experience of the interiors through daylight, air movement, and a sustained visual connection to the city. This is housing that treats outlook as an essential component of spatial quality rather than a premium add-on.

Inside, State of Craft’s interiors move away from generic luxury toward a more composed and tactile domestic atmosphere. Natural oak, bespoke joinery, and curated furnishings establish a softer counterpoint to the glass and aluminum envelope, while commissioned and selected works by Richeldis Fine Art introduce a further layer of specificity. The result is an interior environment that aims to feel furnished and inhabited from the outset, reinforcing the project’s attempt to reconcile the service culture of high-end rental living with the character of a home.

The amenity program reinforces that positioning. Spread across three levels and totaling 12,000 square feet, it includes a private dining room and kitchen, cinema, wellness suite, gym, sauna, steam room, orangery, library, terrace, and an outdoor swimming pool set high above the city. These facilities are clearly pitched at a premium market, yet architecturally they also serve a broader purpose: they redistribute the experience of collective life throughout the building and turn shared space into one of the project’s defining features.

At ground level, the tower’s contribution to the city is equally deliberate. Raised above the site so that it appears to hover over the public realm, Shard Place introduces new landscaped space by Dan Pearson Studio alongside retail accommodation, helping knit the building into the movement and daily use of London Bridge. That gesture matters in a location shaped by transport intensity and constant pedestrian flow. Here, residential architecture is asked not only to provide privacy and outlook, but also to participate in the making of a more continuous urban environment.