Take a peek inside the Co-operative Group’s head office

A 360-degree virtual tour of One Angel Square, the Co-operative Group’s head office in Manchester, has been launched.

Using the Google Street View technology, curious explorers can take a tour of the building including the basement gym to views from the 14th floor.

When the Queen officially opened One Angel Square in November 2013, it was declared the most environmentally-friendly building in the world. The Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM), an internationally acclaimed system of assessing buildings, gave One Angel Square a score of 95.16% – the highest ever awarded.

Take the tour below, or visit the page on Google.

One Angel Square environmental facts

  • The building has its own source of heat and power generation, which also gives power back to the national grid
  • Heat recovery from the IT systems also helps to heat the building
  • A twin skin façade that acts as a ‘duvet’ to insulate the offices in the winter and ventilate it in the summer
  • The atrium generates light by flooding the building with natural sunlight, reducing the artificial lighting by almost half
  • A rainwater recycling system has been set up for toilet flushing and irrigation
  • A flexible working policy was introduced, which includes the option to work remotely (which both reduces the amount of desk space needed and has a positive environmental impact due to reduced travel requirements), whilst a digital storage policy reduced the amount of paper the business used.  If the Group had continued using the same amount of paper after moving in to 1 Angel Square as it did previously, an additional four stories would need to be added to the building for storage alone. As a result there is also no longer paper mail delivered to the building