We had lunch yesterday halfway up the Shard, delicious dim sum and Peking duck. In the week when the Shard is a candidate for the Stirling prize, it was good to see what it is like from the inside. The jury will have difficulties ignoring it because whether one likes it or not (I do like it), it has so obviously changed the grammar of architecture in London. What I particularly like are the distant views from far away as one enters London on the M11 or the A2 beyond Blackheath. Inside, it has amazing views of central London along the railway tracks east and west and the massing of the City northwards round the Cheesegrater. Oddly, the buildings which catch one’s eye in aerial perspective are those of Renzo Piano’s other major project in central London at Central St. Giles, so brightly coloured in the dense massing of historic London.
This is the view west:
East towards Canary Wharf:
And north:
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
Did you go to the loo! That really is spectacular, from the Ladies you look down onto the Royal Naval ship Belfast and to see all the red poppies in the Moat at the Tower of London was extremely moving, there must be such a queue at this London Ladies, how do they ever get the people to come out!!!
No, I only went to the Gents which has a fine view out along the railway tracks towards the North Downs.