Sellar Property Group will once again work with investors from Qatar to bring a new project to the south of Thames River. The 27 storey residential tower will not only give The Shard company, but it will bring London an additional 150 apartments, retail facilities and a roof garden.

The property developers will revamp Fielden House – a 1970s office building on London Bridge Street, a move that will culminate in an additional 160,000 square feet of residential and commercial space for the dense urban environment.

“It is intended that this new building will ‘float’ some 14m above the enlarged public realm space on London Bridge Street, opening up new access routes between the two levels, and providing views down to Guy’s hospital, Kings College Campus and the proposed Science Gallery for the first time,” Sellar told The Guardian.

“A new generous staircase and a multi-level retail space will link the two levels, creating a new through route from the public Plaza and bus station above, to St Thomas Street below, significantly improving pedestrian circulation and quality of the public realm,” the group added.

Like Abu Dhabi via Masdar City, Qatar is increasing its international investment presence. Although it remains to be seen whether or not the London towers are sound investments.

According to The Guardian, the Shard’s 10 apartments have yet to be scooped up, nor are we surprised. They’re supposedly priced at £50 million a piece.

:: The Guardian

Image of The Shard / Shutterstock

The post The Shard is getting a neighbor and Qatar is footing the bill appeared first on Green Prophet.

The Shard architect Renzo Piano has partnered with Italy’s Enel Green Power to design a new ultra lightweight wind turbine that has a smaller visual impact on the landscape than conventional wind turbines.

Upon inauguration of Qatari-owned The Shard, locals complained that Renzo Piano’s soaring 1,016 foot skyscraper completely dominated the London Bridge Quarter in which it was built.

But that is no indicator that the world-renowned Genoese architect is unable or unwilling to produce designs with a more modest footprint.

Working in collaboration with Enel, a leading green energy provider, Piano designed the Dragonfly Invisible Wind Turbine – a compact turbine with just two-blades that are better suited to widespread implementation than conventional turbines with three blades.

Just 66 feet tall, the tower’s blades have a 52 foot diameter rotational span and are able to harvest even the lightest winds due to the lightweight carbon and polycarbonate materials out of which they are constructed. At the same time, it is important that the blades don’t over-function in high speed winds.

The turbine is currently undergoing testing at the Molinetto test field in Italy’s Pisa province, home to the ENEL research center, and may be mass produced once viability studies are complete for widespread distribution throughout Italy.

Sites in the Middle East and North Africa have great wind energy potential – particularly along the Mediterranean coast, but conventional wind turbines are so large and costly that it’s very unlikely that more than a few clean energy enthusiasts would employ them en masse.

But the smaller turbines, which are virtually “invisible” when not in use since the two blades – inlaid with transparent plexiglass panels – align vertically with the tower, have a lot more potential for residential and small-scale commercial applications.

In a recent release, Enel Green Power describes their motivation for commissioning Renzo Piano to design the Dragonfly Invisible Turbine.

“The new mini-wind-turbine blade is part of Enel Green Power’s strategy for innovation that targets improving the performance of all the renewable technologies, making them more available and less prone to problems linked to intermittency.”

:: Designboom

The post The Shard Architect Designs Ultra Lightweight Dragonfly Wind Turbine appeared first on Green Prophet.

Officially inaugurated amid great pomp and circumstance, the building is small when compared to Dubai’s 2,717 foot Burj Al-Khalifa, but at 1,016 feet, it dwarfs the London Bridge Quarter in which it was built. But far from being a monument to Britain, the latest tallest building in western Europe is 95% owned by the government of Qatar.

The People Said No

During the building’s planning phase, UNESCO warned that its appearance on the city skyline could jeopardize the nearby Tower of London’s world heritage status and residents protested as well, but then deputy Prime Minister John Prescott approved the plans anyway.

“Mr Prescott would only approve skyscrapers of exceptional design,” his office announced in November, 2003. “For a building of this size to be acceptable, the quality of its design is critical. He is satisfied that the proposed tower is of the highest architectural quality.”

The 72-story mixed-use structure wrapped in steel and 11,000 panes of glass has a concrete core and cost in the region of £435 million to build. Within it are office facilities, three floors of restaurants, 10 flats that are on sale for £30-50 million a piece, and a deluxe Shangri-La hotel.

And because the development is backed by Sharia-compliant investment, tenants are subjected to certain rules.

Islamic banks are not permitted to make money from interest, though investors will make their money back somehow. Also, even though on the surface The Shard shouldn’t accommodate businesses that promote gambling or alcohol, it will be impossible to regulate said behavior among the mega-rich – the only people who will be able to afford to frequent the place.

The London Land Grab

In addition to being a vulgar display of Qatar’s wealth, The Shard’s domination of London’s skyline bears an uncanny resemblance to the land grabs in Africa.

George Monbiot recently exclaimed that peak oil isn’t as imminent as we thought and that we are cheerfully deep frying ourselves as a result, but Qatar is still planning for an eventual end to the heyday of easy oil and gas riches.

Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassem Bin Jabor Al Thani, Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Qatar and Prince Andrew Albert Edward, the Duke of York inaugurated the towering glass monument together as a symbol of the solid ties between the two nations.

Al Thani, according to a recent press release, stated “that the external investments embody the Qatar 2030 vision; a roadmap to achieve a diversified income that is independent from oil and gas revenues. Therefore, from an investment perspective, this landmark is the path towards realizing our objective.”

Qatar is doing well to secure its future, but at what cost to the locals? Like the Africans who are losing fertile acreage to Qatar and other food-insecure Gulf nations, Britain is losing its historical heritage to the moneymakers.

Writing for The Guardian, Aditya Chakraborrty warns that The Shard is the perfect metaphor for modern London.

So one of London’s most identifiable buildings will have almost nothing to do with the city itself. Even the office space rented out at the bottom is intended for hedge funds and financiers wanting more elbow room than they can afford in the City or Mayfair. The only working-class Londoners will presumably bus in at night from the outskirts to clean the bins. Otherwise, to all intents and purposes, this will be the Tower of the 1%.

Of course, Qatar is not the first country to assert itself outside of its own borders. China practically owns Africa, where it extracts natural resources en masse to keep the giant’s burgeoning population afloat, and Britain was one of the world’s most “successful” colonizers. But now it seems that maybe the tiny island nation is finally getting a taste of its own medicine?

The post The Shard is Qatar’s London land grab appeared first on Green Prophet.