Flick through the Shard’s progress in pictures, then read Rowan Moore’s article tracking the building’s haphazard journey from pipe dream to reality, and asks is it a good thing for the capital?

‘Save us from a poke in the eye with a sharp stick,” I wrote in the LondonEvening Standard, in 2000, when property developer Irvine Sellar unveiled plans for a 1,400ft-high pointy cylinder above London Bridge station. I went on to say that if he wanted to build something this big, which would be visible all over London, the least Sellar could do was hire a decent architect.