BT Tower Hotel Conversion Guts a Grade II Landmark and Keeps the Shell

MCR Hotels paid BT Group 270 million pounds for the BT Tower in February 2024, and is now working out how to put a hotel inside a 177-metre Grade II listed concrete cylinder whose floor plates were built to hold telecom equipment. The answer, so far, is four rooms per floor.

Project Scope

Hotel rooms go on tower levels 7 through 23 at four keys per floor, with more keys in the Howland Building, the 1939 Museum Telephone Exchange at the base, which takes a three-to-four-storey upward extension. The scheme reinstates the summit as a public vantage point with a rotating observation floor and high-altitude dining; the revolving restaurant last opened to the public in 1980. A swimming pool and a new public square at podium level are in the consultation package.

Orms is the architect, having replaced Heatherwick Studio in May 2025, with Donald Insall Associates on heritage and conservation. Camden Council held a second public consultation on 13 July 2026 and a decision is expected in September.

Why It Matters

The listing protects the exterior and the interior is coming out entirely, which makes this the cleanest version of a structure-retention job anywhere in central London right now. A cylinder is close to the worst possible geometry for hotel keys, and the four-rooms-per-floor answer tells you how little the developer was willing to compromise the silhouette to get room count. The upward extension of the podium buildings is where the keys actually get made.

Two things are worth flagging. The total construction cost has not been published, so the 270 million pound figure in circulation is the acquisition price and nothing else. And the architect swap is unusual enough to note on its own: design architects rarely change on a landmark of this profile, and this one happened in public.

Project Team & Details