In the bustling King’s Cross area of London, UK architecture firm Orms renovated and reimagined an outdated 1974 office building into a 266-room boutique hotel, The Standard London. The existing building, located opposite two major railway stations, was a former municipal facility built in the architecturally significant Brutalist style.

As lead consultants on the project, the Orms team was responsible for the exterior architecture shell and building core. Using an adaptive reuse model, the renovation project retained as much of the existing building as possible to preserve its post-war architectural heritage. From there, the building was extended and extensively remodeled, with a bold design that added three new stories atop the existing structure to host a restaurant, bar, and roof terrace.