FEATURE
ANGEL OF THE NORTH
Tim Wood takes a tour of One Angel Square, the new Mancunian home of The Co-operative Group.
It has been said that sustainability is like teen sex. Everyone says
they're doing it. Most aren't. And those that are, are doing it badly. That was one of the messages coming out of the British Institute of Facilities Management’s 7th annual report into sustainability. If sustainability is like teen sex, then One Angel Square, where the report’s findings were announced, is the high school stud who developed early. The latest addition to Manchester’s skyline opened for business for the Co- operative Group in February of this year and is a building the Co-op is rightly proud of.
A tour of the £114million project shows how far the Co-op has come in the last three years. Speaking at the launch of the sustainability report, Kate Morris-Bates, the Head of FM at the Co-op, compared the new residence to the situation three years ago when the team was making do with gaffer taped carpet at Lancaster
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House while Angel Square was being constructed. Running Angel Square, according to Morris-Bates, is a ‘privilege’ that has benefitted massively from FM involvement in the planning process.
The team behind the new site, including the Architectural Project Leader, Mike Hitchmough, were given the brief of creating a highly sustainable building through ‘pragmatic innovation’. Hitchmough’s argument is that, while Angel Square might appear particularly revolutionary, there’s ‘nothing groundbreaking’ about it. Many of the sustainable features, such as the twin skin facade and earth tubes, were all in evidence in the buildings across Europe used as a sounding board for Angel Square.
Noticeable from the building’s viewing deck is the CIS Tower, which has been a dominant force in Manchester’s architecture since the 1960s. Landmark buildings are very much a reflection of the age they are built in, and Angel Square’s design
TOMORROW’S FM | 13
is a distinct departure from the CIS Tower’s monolithic, skyscraper structure. In the age of sustainability, Angel Square’s original designs were based on the beehive symbol that co-operative societies generally adopt (there are a number of stone beehives dotted around the architecture of other Co-op buildings) and all of the six potential designs made use of a central atrium.
That central atrium now stands as a colossal pillar of space, regulating...
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