Believe it or not, the first whispers of building something massive on the site started way back in the 1980s. The spot was just a boring, empty gap near London Bridge station. Developers tried to get a massive office block approved, but everyone said “no thanks.”
Then, in 2000, the London mayor at the time, Ken Livingstone, decided the city needed a tall, iconic building to attract investment. He called it the “London Bridge Tower” project. But it wasn’t until the Italian architect Renzo Piano showed up in 2001 with a wild idea that things got seriously interesting.
Piano didn’t want a boring box. He sketched a shard of glass—a jagged, irregular shape that looked like a piece of the sky falling down. Renzo once said the design was inspired by a drawing of a spire his 11-year-old son made. How cool is that?
