Fascinating! It looks like there’s a significant discrepancy between the highest spot a person can stand on the building, and the highest pointy-bits of the building top. Plausibly ~4m? You have a few more options than just web search, since you live nearby:
Have you gone up to the viewing platform (https://www.the-shard.com/about/level-guide/) and read any informational plaques that might be posted there? If you have a phone that tells you your elevation above sea level, what’s it say when you’re on that observation deck? Is there a guide or guard on-site who might know enough about the building to answer questions on it? (I know you say you can’t go up but it looks like tickets are available? https://www.theviewfromtheshard.com/book-tickets/)
Have you chatted with a librarian at a local library about it? They might have ideas for non-internet resources that could contain info on how tall each part of the building is. I’m thinking specifically that there were probably public hearings when the building was being planned, and those hearings probably involved diagrams of the building, but those diagrams would be more the domain of a historical society than current city records after construction.
Do any local museums have exhibits about the city’s recent history that might include more info? If a museum even seems like it ought to have info, try dropping by a few times and chatting with the humans.
The fire department probably knows more than the internet about exactly what’s going on inside the building, since they have to understand its system of standpipes, fire doors, etc to deal with emergencies in it. If you ever get to chatting with a friendly outreach person from them who has some time to spare, consider asking for their advice on finding out how buildings like that are measured.
Are amateur radio clubs a thing in your area? In my experience, they contain exactly the sorts of people who would know where you can find conclusive sources on this sort of interesting engineering trivia.
* Does the top of the building ever cast a shadow onto any park, street, or other publicly accessible location? If you know the exact date and time and location of the shadow of the deck and the shadow of the tip, you can combine that with a topo map and go full Aristotle to triangulate the heights of the parts that are casting the shadow. GPS is likely too imprecise to find the exact shadow locations, but a photograph of the shadow which lines it up with map-visible landmarks like building corners, utility poles, etc could be used.
All good suggestions! But I’m probably not interested enough to, like, leave my flat and talk to people to investigate :p
(I actually did ask a friend who works there if there were any plaques or anything. He said he’d look next time he was in the office, but I think he probably forgot.)
I hadn’t realized there was an open-air viewing platform, I thought the highest the public could go was a few floors below the roof. Still, it looks to me like there’s a lot more than 4 m from there to the tip.
If you’re on the open-air viewing platform, it might be feasible to use something like a sextant or shadow lengths to figure out the height from the platform to the top, and then use a different tool to figure out the height of the platform.
From the photo of the tower’s shadow in this article, I have two further guesses about the relative heights of the viewing platform and the pointy bits:
At some time in the year, the building’s shadow will probably show the viewing deck height and pointy bit height, so they could in theory be triangulated
Due to the surrounding urban development, it looks wildly unlikely that the shadow will hit any surface it’s actually useful to measure it on.
It might not be legal to use from the viewing platform to the pointy bits, and it might not work in broad daylight, but a laser distance meter with ~50m range can be had for around $20 at the low end and fits in a pocket ;)
A sextant is much less likely to cause problems by interfering with other tech, though.
Ah. Perhaps you could wait till someone from out of town is visiting, and use them as an excuse to go up to the platform… that’s how I usually make it to local tourist spots =)
Fascinating! It looks like there’s a significant discrepancy between the highest spot a person can stand on the building, and the highest pointy-bits of the building top. Plausibly ~4m? You have a few more options than just web search, since you live nearby:
Have you gone up to the viewing platform (https://www.the-shard.com/about/level-guide/) and read any informational plaques that might be posted there? If you have a phone that tells you your elevation above sea level, what’s it say when you’re on that observation deck? Is there a guide or guard on-site who might know enough about the building to answer questions on it? (I know you say you can’t go up but it looks like tickets are available? https://www.theviewfromtheshard.com/book-tickets/)
Have you chatted with a librarian at a local library about it? They might have ideas for non-internet resources that could contain info on how tall each part of the building is. I’m thinking specifically that there were probably public hearings when the building was being planned, and those hearings probably involved diagrams of the building, but those diagrams would be more the domain of a historical society than current city records after construction.
Do any local museums have exhibits about the city’s recent history that might include more info? If a museum even seems like it ought to have info, try dropping by a few times and chatting with the humans.
The fire department probably knows more than the internet about exactly what’s going on inside the building, since they have to understand its system of standpipes, fire doors, etc to deal with emergencies in it. If you ever get to chatting with a friendly outreach person from them who has some time to spare, consider asking for their advice on finding out how buildings like that are measured.
Are amateur radio clubs a thing in your area? In my experience, they contain exactly the sorts of people who would know where you can find conclusive sources on this sort of interesting engineering trivia.
* Does the top of the building ever cast a shadow onto any park, street, or other publicly accessible location? If you know the exact date and time and location of the shadow of the deck and the shadow of the tip, you can combine that with a topo map and go full Aristotle to triangulate the heights of the parts that are casting the shadow. GPS is likely too imprecise to find the exact shadow locations, but a photograph of the shadow which lines it up with map-visible landmarks like building corners, utility poles, etc could be used.All good suggestions! But I’m probably not interested enough to, like, leave my flat and talk to people to investigate :p
(I actually did ask a friend who works there if there were any plaques or anything. He said he’d look next time he was in the office, but I think he probably forgot.)
I hadn’t realized there was an open-air viewing platform, I thought the highest the public could go was a few floors below the roof. Still, it looks to me like there’s a lot more than 4 m from there to the tip.
If you’re on the open-air viewing platform, it might be feasible to use something like a sextant or shadow lengths to figure out the height from the platform to the top, and then use a different tool to figure out the height of the platform.
From the photo of the tower’s shadow in this article, I have two further guesses about the relative heights of the viewing platform and the pointy bits:
At some time in the year, the building’s shadow will probably show the viewing deck height and pointy bit height, so they could in theory be triangulated
Due to the surrounding urban development, it looks wildly unlikely that the shadow will hit any surface it’s actually useful to measure it on.
It might not be legal to use from the viewing platform to the pointy bits, and it might not work in broad daylight, but a laser distance meter with ~50m range can be had for around $20 at the low end and fits in a pocket ;)
A sextant is much less likely to cause problems by interfering with other tech, though.
They will in fact stop you from taking fancy laser measuring kit to the top of the Shard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckcdqlo3pYc&t=792s.
Ah. Perhaps you could wait till someone from out of town is visiting, and use them as an excuse to go up to the platform… that’s how I usually make it to local tourist spots =)