Architect AHMM’s reimagining of Angel Square in Islington for US developer Tishman Speyer has quickly attracted tech and social media tenants since its completion in November 2025.
It offers a hotel-like welcome in an elegant, animated lobby that includes a new public café and a more direct visual relationship with Upper Street, benefitting from a glazed facade and 1,000 sq ft of extra pavement to ease congestion at the Angel’s traffic pinch point.
Frequency Coffee forms part of the main lobby on a lower half level (see pic) as the site slopes down to City Road and is thriving as CAF members discovered on our recent tour, led by project lead and AHMM associate director, Alex Russell.
The 200,000 sq ft scheme offers lessons for other new or refurbished office schemes, perhaps especially those in the City. It has a softer less obviously corporate character (including ambient music) that seems an appropriate response to the N1 location but also fits with cultural and generational shifts in expectations from London’s workspace and hotel offerings.
Its Post-Modern predecessor, designed by Rock Townsend, offered 77,000 sq ft less workspace inefficiently in three buildings, each with separate cores set around a central court, with blank and fortress-like elevated ground floor facades limiting connections to Upper Street.
There was some debate about whether this was worthy of preservation. But Islington planners took the view after detailed consideration, that its PoMo design was not one of the era’s finest and AHMM’s proposal was a worthy replacement.
A light-coloured glass-reinforced concrete façade responds to the rhythm of the original structure, while glazed faience elements apply coloured highlights to the grid of the facade, reflecting colours in the nearby Angel context.
The ground floor also accommodates the existing Angel underground ticket hall, while the previous central courtyard becomes a new single core for the whole scheme. A new public courtyard is introduced at the scheme’s northern end, linking through to Torrens Street, and providing access to affordable workspaces. The hope is when the adjacent bank hq to the north is redeveloped, more might be made of this new space, which is gated at night.
Sitting directly under the LVMF’s protected view from Alexandra Palace to St Paul’s Cathedral, has meant there are spectacular uncluttered 360-degree views from Angel Square’s green and very pleasant 15,000 sq ft roof terrace, shorn of intrusive plantrooms. Like being on a clifftop, but in the heart of the city.
Angel Square reinforces how good re-use can be, not just at extending the life of existing buildings, but also in offering more to the building’s new inhabitants, to the public and the surrounding city. That has to be good for all parties, and for Islington. City developers and architects take note.
Main contractor: McLaren
Planning: DP9
Structure engineer: AKT-II
Façade engineer: Eckersley O’Callaghan
M&E: Chapman BDSP
Project manager: Third London Wall
Cost consultant: Core Five
Interior design: Michaelis Boyd
Angel Square, main elevation to Upper Street
Frequency Coffee café overlooking Upper Street
Main facade detail, with entrance doors
Roof terrace with 360-views over the city
