After nearly a decade of design and construction, the former US Embassy building on Grosvenor Square has re-opened as a luxury hotel. Originally designed by American architect Eero Saarinen and completed in 1960, the Grade II listed building has been transformed into The Chancery Rosewood, which welcomed its first guests earlier this month.
The adaptive reuse project centred on preserving and enhancing the building's distinctive modernist architecture while meeting contemporary hospitality standards. Key interventions included the restoration and extension of Saarinen's signature concrete diagrid ceiling, the careful refurbishment of the Portland stone façade, a vertical extension that reinterprets Saarinen’s distinctive O-frames at a larger scale, and the addition of a new rear infill structure that completes the building's geometric plan.
The transformation also saw the removal of security barriers that had accumulated over the embassy's operational years, opening it to the surroundings and embedding the hotel in its Mayfair setting.