One Portwall Square: Bristol’s New Office with a Sense of Neighbourhood
One Portwall Square isn’t trying to be cool — which is exactly why it is, and it is doing it with serious style. Designed by AHMM for boutique developer Nord Property, this black and orange stunner sits just a stone’s throw from Bristol Temple Meads station. The six-storey essay on smart design and occupant comfort has taken over a forgotten 1970s squash court turned it into something genuinely useful. Goodbye, damp sports hall, squeaky squash shoes and unsightly skid marks (you’ve played squash, you know what I mean). Hello, sunlit terraces and high ceilings.
The design plays nice with its neighbour, 100 Temple Street, matching the floor heights and borrowing from the same orange-red brick and concrete palette. That neat little wraparound spandrel? It’s not just a pretty face — it forms the balustrade for the cantilevered terraces and throws down some shade (literally) for the floor below.
And it’s not just another dumb box. The building thinks for itself — smart mixed-mode ventilation, in-slab cooling, and natural airflow keep things fresh. It’s green too: BREEAM Excellent, WiredScore and ActiveScore Platinum, EPC A, and hooked up to the Bristol Heat Network, so it’s doing its bit for the planet. Basically, ticking every sustainability box without making a big fuss about it (not making a big fuss seems to be an AHMM motif)
AHMM themselves moved in at the end of 2022, doubling their studio space and giving the team room to breathe, and putting their money where their mouth is, so to speak. Proof of the pudding and all. The building made such a good impression that it won the 2023 British Council for Offices (BCO) National Award for Best Commercial Workplace — which is about as close as you get to an Oscar for office design, (do you get a little gold statue to wedge the toilet door open with?)
Nord, the developer, knows what they’re doing — they’ve been behind some of London’s best buildings over the last 25 years, and One Portwall Square shows that same mix of style and smarts. It’s an office that people actually want to go to, big windows, private terraces, together with a big, generous, stylish square for passers by to sit and marvel. So: green, thoughtful, good looking and great company. How’s that for being an ideal neighbour?
