by Shane Henson — November 13, 2013—The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), a global property professional body, recently announced One Angel Square as Project of the Year 2013 at the RICS Awards Grand Final held last month at the Savoy Hotel in London. In the best-ever year for entries, more than 600 building projects entered the awards program, which celebrates the built and natural environment, the organization says.
The Grand Final category winners for the 2013 RICS Awards are:
- Building Conservation: The Florence Institute, Liverpool
- Community Benefit: Hengrove Park Leisure Centre, Bristol
- Design and Innovation: One Angel Square, Manchester
- Regeneration: Clyde Gateway Regeneration, Glasgow
One Angel Square, the overall winning project, is a highly sustainable office building in Manchester, England, that was completed in February 2013. The first element of a masterplan expected to transform the Northern Quarter, the building serves as the headquarters for the Co-operative Group, a British consumer cooperative with a diverse range of retail businesses.
One Angel Square is recognized as the largest commercial office building in Manchester and has also achieved the highest scoring BREEAM “outstanding” office rating in the country, setting a new national benchmark in sustainable design in the commercial sector, RICS says. The building is of steel and concrete frame construction with concrete topping floor slabs, a double-skin glazed façade, and a series of winter gardens on floors two through 11, providing break-out spaces and a greatly enhanced working environment. It benefits from a large full-height atrium providing natural light throughout.
According to RICS, judges commented that every aspect of One Angel Square was constructed with sustainability at heart, with leading technologies utilized throughout, including underground earth tubes that provide an amount of free heating and cooling. Powered by a pure plant oil-fed combined heat and power (CHP) system, the building also uses rapeseed oil grown on the Co-operative Group’s own farmland.
One Angel Square and the other successful 2013 projects join an elite group of past winners including St. Paul’s Cathedral, St. Pancras station in London, Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, the Eden Project in Cornwall, and the site of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney.
