Richard Rogers has said tall buldings should be built as high as possible because towers at 40 or 60 storeys are virtually indistinguishable from each other.

His practice’s 48-floor Leadenhall building is on site in the City of London and when completed, in 2014, will top out at 225m, becoming the highest building in the Sqaure Mile.

Speaking at this week’s Mipim property show in Cannes, Rogers said towers could be built even taller –- exceeding even the country’s highest, the 310m-tall Shard, which is due to complete later this spring.

“If you have high buildings, they might as well be as high as possible,” he said. “If a building is above 10 storeys, it’s lost contact with the ground and 40 or 60 storey storey buildings are more or less the same at that height. If the Shard had 10 storeys more, who would it disturb?”

Rogers said tall buildings tended to add to cities rather than blight them. “Towers are better than low buildings because they’ve been scrutinised more,” he argued. “It doesn’t mean you can put towers anywhere you like but I think towers have added to the city.”

Rogers also said that glass should not be ditched by developers as a material. “If you put glass in without thinking, then you’ve got a problem. It’s how you handle the materials,” he said. “But glass will be a major part of buildings. It would be pretty awful not to have a view out.”

But he admitted that he didn’t expect a glut of tall buildings to start spring up across UK cities. “The ones that work tend to be the more expensive,” he said.