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I’ve enjoyed watching The Shard at London Bridge grow from a short concrete stump<\/a> back in March 2010, and now it’s rapidly heading towards its completion deadline of May 2012.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The final crane \u2013 the tallest ever built in Britain \u2013 was installed in September and tasked with installing the skyscraper’s upper spire.<\/p>\n Pre-fabricated and pre-assembled with the use of 3D modelling, the vertigo-inducing crane underwent a “test run” in Yorkshire before being lifted onto the building.<\/p>\n Standing 310 m (1,017 ft) tall when completed in May 2012, the Shard will have the honour of being the tallest building in the European Union – and the 45th-tallest building in the world.<\/p>\n Seen rising over the tower blocks of Barrington Road in Brixton, the Shard is flanked by the Heron Tower<\/a> to the left and the Gherkin<\/a> to the right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve enjoyed watching The Shard at London Bridge grow from a short concrete stump back in March 2010, and now it’s rapidly heading towards its completion deadline of May 2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[194,17,193],"tags":[199,10,358,351],"class_list":["post-5485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-london-features","category-photos","category-places","tag-architecture","tag-london","tag-shard","tag-skyscraper"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/shard-london-bridge-nov-2011-01.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-1qt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5485"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5486,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5485\/revisions\/5486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/shard-london-bridge-nov-2011-02.jpg\")
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