The shard , for example , was put on hold in 2007 after the first tremors of the credit crunch ; work only restarted after an infusion of private money from a qatari consortium in 2008 .
When plans for the " shard of glass " , near london bridge , were unveiled in 2000 , english heritage condemned the tower as " europe 's tallest building and london 's greatest folly " .
" If there is even a nano-sized particle of dust , a small metal shard or water condensation that gets into the battery cell , it can overheat and explode , " says sara bradford of frost & sullivan , a consultancy .
The past few months have seen the startlingly quick rise of the shard ( right ) , a 72-storey glass-and-steel building in southwark designed by an italian architect , renzo piano ( joint creator of the pompidou centre in paris ) , which will contain offices , restaurants and a hotel .
Over the next few years the shard is scheduled to be joined by , among others , the 202m heron tower , a 225m building dubbed the " cheese grater " and a 288m spiral construction nicknamed the " helter skelter " ( all in the city ) .