We have a living or green roof to attempt to, er, insulate our building but also significantly to add some, erm, habitat, foliage, erm, on to what was previously a pretty barren surface of asphalt. Foliage holds moisture and changes the surface temperature and it attracts wildlife, insects, you know, invertebrates. We've got a great big pond - erm, we can see dragonflies from time to time in the summer, erm, which you certainly didn't use to see. You certainly get birds coming down. It's transformed a barren area into something with a bit of life in it, erm, so we're reasonably proud of it. It looks nice for the people who work here - you can eat your dinner, erm, and feel quite relaxed. It's, erm, it's certainly well used.
We were obliged to actually invite visitors to come and look at the roof because there was some public money towards it, erm. But we also are rather keen for people to see what's possible. We're not saying everybody can put a green roof up but we want to show at least some innovation in design and open people's eyes to the fact that all the concrete and hard masonry surfaces we have in our city are making the city hotter and messing up the climate for us and everybody else. And therefore we need to do everything we can to counteract that and, you know, produce a more benign, even positive, physical environment. The air quality in Manchester is pretty poor for instance; the rainfall's going wrong. Green roofs, you know, offer some opportunity to redress some of that stuff.