What's In A Name

The Shard is made up of 11,000 glass panels on the exterior. The building is named as it is modelled on a shard of glass, and its 11,000 panels have a total area of 56,000 square metres.

Eight sloping glass facades, the "shards", define the shape and visual quality of the tower, fragmenting the scale of the building and reflecting the light in unpredictable ways. Open vents in the gaps or “fractures” between the shards, provide natural ventilation to winter gardens.

According to The Shard's official website, fundamental to Piano’s vision of the building was the idea of lightness and transparency. For all its height, The Shard would be an elegant spire in contrast to the bulky high-rises of the past. Realizing this idea meant using glass in a highly innovative way. Piano’s sophisticated use of extra white glass, with these expressive facades gives the tower a lightness and a sensitivity to the changing sky around it, The Shard’s colour and mood are constantly changing according to the weather and seasons (n.d.)

Reference:

http://www.the-shard.com/shard/the-vision/