£1bn "skinny Shard" set to come to Paddington

Designed by Renzo Piano, the “skinny Shard” is officially known as 31 London Street

Love or loathe the Shard, London’s getting another one.

The developer of the Shard Irvine Sellar is set to put a 65-storey “skinny Shard” next to St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington.

The building will boast 200 new homes, 150,000 sq ft of office space and 50,000 sq ft of retail. It will also have restaurants on the 60th, 61st and 62nd storeys and a 5,000 sq ft public roof garden.

Designed by Renzo Piano, the “skinny Shard” is officially known as 31 London Street and is also backed by Singapore’s Hotel Properties.

Irvine Sellar, chairman of Sellar Property Group, said: “At the moment you only go to Paddington for two reasons — to catch a train or to see someone in hospital. It is soulless and has no life and yet it is only five minutes from Hyde Park and seven or eight minutes from Marble Arch.

“It is a fantastic location but it is stuck in a Fifties time-warp. We intend to create a place for people to go, where they will want to live, work, eat and shop.

“Paddington is connected to Heathrow, the Bakerloo and District and Circle lines and Crossrail is coming, but the immediate vicinity is messy and depressing. We can transform it completely. And this is not just talk — everyone can see that we’ve done it already at London Bridge.”