Renowned British architect David Chipperfield has successfully completed the ambitious transformation of London's former US Embassy building into a luxury hotel, marking one of the most significant adaptive reuse projects in recent architectural history. The project, funded by Qatari Diar, an investment arm of the Qatar Investment Authority, has converted the iconic Grade II-listed building into The Rosewood Chancery, a 137-bedroom five-star hotel featuring extensive dining, retail, and event facilities.
The comprehensive renovation involved adding two stories to the original structure, effectively doubling the building's floor space from 24,000 square meters to 48,000 square meters. The restored hotel now boasts five restaurants, six retail shops, a full-service spa, and a grand 1,000-person ballroom, all housed within the carefully preserved Mid-century Modernist façade. The project required meticulous attention to preserving the building's historic character while adapting it for modern hospitality use.
Chipperfield's team focused on retaining and restoring the building's most significant architectural elements, including the distinctive front and side façades and the unique exposed concrete diagrid ceiling on the first floor. The restoration process involved the careful removal of external security measures that had accumulated over the years, as well as the original perimeter barriers, to improve the building's connection to its surroundings. More than 4,000 individual architectural elements were disassembled, cleaned, refurbished, and reinstalled during the renovation process.
The ground floor now houses all retail, restaurant, and bar facilities, which connect seamlessly to a newly landscaped public realm surrounding the building. On the main public floor, partitions that had been added over the years to create separate office spaces were removed, allowing for a continuous reading of Saarinen's original exposed concrete diagrid ceiling. This restoration has created a grand open expanse that reaffirms the original architect's intention for the building to appear as "a palace on the park."
The upper floors have been largely rebuilt behind the existing façade to accommodate guest rooms arranged around a new central atrium. The basement level contains the impressive ballroom, spa facilities, retail units, car parking, and essential plant rooms. A significant addition to the building is the vertically extended sixth story, which forms a new crown following the established architectural language of the floors below, complete with new rhythm and increased floor-to-ceiling heights developed after extensive historic investigations into Saarinen's early proposals.
The most luxurious accommodations are housed in a set-back pavilion above the sixth floor, containing penthouses that reportedly cost between $17,000 and $24,000 per night. This exclusive level is accentuated with gold anodized aluminum that echoes the building's prominent gilded eagle sculpture by Theodore Roszak, which has been meticulously restored and returned to its original position. Additional public facilities on the top story provide terraces with panoramic views over Grosvenor Square and toward Hyde Park.
The sustainability achievements of this project are particularly noteworthy, as The Rosewood Chancery has become the first hotel in the United Kingdom to achieve a BREEAM Outstanding rating. The Portland stone window surrounds of the façade have been restored, and the building envelope has been upgraded to meet high sustainability standards, demonstrating how historic preservation can align with modern environmental goals.
The conversion project received approval from Westminster Council in November 2016, despite initial objections from The Twentieth Century Society, which argued that the proposed sixth floor would cause substantial harm to the building's historic character. However, councillors ultimately agreed with Historic England that any harm would be "less than substantial," granting permission on the condition that developers remove security fences, gates, and bollards that had been installed in 2006.
The original building holds significant historical importance as London's first modern embassy, constructed between 1957 and 1960 to designs by renowned American architect Eero Saarinen. Saarinen worked with Yorke, Rosenberg and Mardall as UK executive architects and F.J. Samuely as structural engineers. The building's historic significance stems not only from its architectural merit but also from its association with Grosvenor Square's role as the nerve center for US armed forces in the UK during World War II and as the site of violent anti-Vietnam War protests in 1968, during which 200 people were arrested.
The building received Grade II listing status in 2009 from Historic England for its architectural and historic interest. The US Embassy vacated the premises in 2017 when diplomatic staff relocated to their new facility designed by Philadelphia-based Kieran Timberlake within the Nine Elms regeneration project. David Chipperfield Architects, working in collaboration with AKT II, was selected for this prestigious transformation project in 2015 through a competitive process that included major firms such as Foster + Partners and KPF.
Ryan Butterfield, associate director at David Chipperfield Architects, explained the firm's approach: "Our strategy balanced preservation of the building's most significant architectural elements with necessary interventions to facilitate its transformation from embassy to hotel. We focused on retaining and restoring the majority of the existing façades, the distinctive diagrid ceiling on the first floor, and the spatial organization of the great rooms overlooking Grosvenor Square. We then made carefully considered additions to the building volume that built on the design language of the building, restoring some of the principles of Saarinen's original design that had been compromised over the years."
The project represents a successful model for adaptive reuse of significant 20th-century architecture, demonstrating how historic buildings can be sensitively transformed to meet contemporary needs while preserving their architectural and cultural significance for future generations.
