3D print The Shard
A free, printable model of The Shard and the railway tracks, towers and streets around it in Southwark, London, generated from real map data in your browser.
Free, in your browser. Exports a slicer-ready 3MF.
About The Shard
The Shard is a pyramid-shaped skyscraper in Southwark, London, with 95 stories. It was designed by Renzo Piano, an Italian architect, and belongs to the Shard Quarter development. At 309.6 m (1,016 ft), it stands taller than any other building in the UK and Western Europe, and it is the seventh tallest in Europe. It replaced Southwark Towers, a 24-story office block put up in 1975.
Piano conceived the tower as a spire-like sculpture rising from the River Thames. He drew on the railway lines beside the site, the masts of sailing ships and the London spires that Canaletto painted. English Heritage objected to the design, describing a shard of glass piercing historic London, and that phrase gave the tower its name. The building has 11,000 panes of glass, set in angled façades meant to reflect sunlight and the sky so that its appearance shifts with the weather and seasons.
Main construction started on March 16, 2009. The top was reached on March 30, 2012, the tower was inaugurated on July 5, 2012, and The View from The Shard, the tower's observation deck, welcomed the public from February 1, 2013. Of the floors, 72 are habitable, and the 72nd has a viewing gallery and an open-air deck 244 m (801 ft) up. The builders used top-down construction, digging the foundations as the core rose, a first for the UK.
How it prints
Make this print opens the generator on a 600 m square around the landmark. Buildings print at close to true scale, so the landmark grows with the print size.
| Print size | Landmark height | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| 160 mm default | 84 mm | 1:3,750 |
| 200 mm | 105 mm | 1:3,000 |
| 256 mm | 135 mm | 1:2,344 |
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North
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East
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South
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West
- A needle-thin crown
- The pyramid narrows to a split, spire-like tip, which is the most delicate part of the model. Print slowly with good cooling, and use layers of 0.12 to 0.16 mm to keep the point crisp.
- Fine panel lines on every face
- Closely spaced lines mark the glass panels on each facet. Print friendly adapts them to the print scale, while Full detail keeps them for a larger print or a fine nozzle.
- One piece with the ground
- The Shard is joined to the ground in the exported file, and the four-side check found no floating parts, so nothing needs gluing.
- Pick the detail for your nozzle
- In the Buildings settings, set Landmark detail to Print friendly to adapt thin parts and small details to the print scale. Full detail keeps every modeled feature, for larger prints or a finer nozzle.
- Colors
- Buildings, roads, water and ground arrive as separate filament slots in the 3MF. The Shard takes the building color.
- File format
- You get a 3MF for Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer or PrusaSlicer. Any of them can save it as STL if you need one.
About this model
The Shard is one of more than 2,300 landmark models in Mini Skyline. They are made with AI, and each one is checked from four sides in its real surroundings before release. Everything around it is built from OpenStreetMap and Overture map data. If you would rather print the shape from map data, turn off Landmark models in the Buildings settings.
Common questions
Is there a The Shard STL I can download?
Mini Skyline builds the file for you in your browser and exports 3MF, which every major slicer opens. If you need an STL, open the 3MF in your slicer and export it from there.
How big can I print it?
Any print size from 40 mm across. The Shard grows with the print: about 84 mm tall on the default 160 mm print. For a model larger than your printer bed, Project Mode splits the area into tiles.
Is it free?
Yes. Generation runs in your browser, with no account and nothing behind a paywall.
