A best-in-class sustainable HQ for a footwear retailer

Pavers Office

This £6 million environmentally-conscious office upgrade transforms the York HQ of Pavers, a family-owned footwear retailer. The new office provides variety of spaces to meet employees’ diverse needs, including different sizes of meeting spaces, collaborative work area, and a series of more informal, plant filled breakout zones. The design creates a vibrant environment for 300 staff, providing a variety of task settings to suit a modern workplace.

Founded with a £200 bank loan in 1971, Pavers is now one of the UK’s leading comfort shoe retailers with more than 100 stores, all managed from the head office in York. Group Ginger worked directly with Pavers to develop a vision for refurbishment and extension to their site, creating a workspace to reflect their organisational values.

Championing sustainability has always been at the heart of Pavers’ business and they are committed to leading the way in changing the future of retail for the better. In 2021 they became the first major UK shoe retailer to achieve both the Carbon Neutral International Certification and participate in the UN’s Climate Now Initiative.

This sustainable workspace exemplar makes extensive use of a timber-hybrid construction and a green roof, amongst other features, to achieve BREEAM Excellent status. As fitting of a company voted the best retailer to work for in the UK by Retail Week, the expansion focuses on wellbeing, with a roof terrace and generous breakout and social spaces.

As part of the design process, Group Ginger met with department heads to discuss their requirements, allowing each department to develop and tailor their working environment to meet their specific needs. Group Ginger and Pavers visited a number of precedents during the design process, including Circl in Amsterdam and Fosbury & Sons in Antwerp. This helped shape the scale and ambition of the new spaces and the materials to be used.