It is a Grade II* listed building and includes the BBC Radio Theatre, where music and speech programmes are recorded in front of a studio audience.

As part of a major consolidation of the BBC's property portfolio in London, Broadcasting House has been extensively renovated and extended.

Hall also wrote and performed, with his dance band, Radio Times, the name of the BBC's schedule publication.

The surrounding outer portion, designed for offices and ancillary spaces, is steel-framed and faced with Portland stone.

The first phase consisted of the renovation of the original building, which was starting to show its age and needed structural repair, and a new wing to the east.

[13] In the old building, the sloped "cat slide" slate roof was removed and many of the rooms stripped back to their walls, although much of the Art Deco architecture was retained and preserved.

The new Egton Wing is roughly the same shape as the main building, with a modern design and window arrangement but retaining features such as Portland stone.

The design of the extension, intended to equal the original in "architectural creativity", was carried out by MacCormac Jamieson Prichard.

Construction was completed in 2005, with the refurbished Broadcasting House and new Egton wing opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 20 April 2006 as part of her 80th birthday celebrations.

The original architects were replaced for not agreeing to cost-related revisions, as Sir Richard MacCormac was unwilling to sacrifice the quality of his design.

[19] When built, Broadcasting House contained 22 radio studios[20][21] for all programme genres, in the art-deco style with an emphasis on both looks and practicality.

The building showcases works of art, most prominently the statues of Prospero and Ariel (from Shakespeare's The Tempest) by Eric Gill.

Their choice was fitting since Prospero was a magician and scholar, and Ariel a spirit of the air, in which radio waves travel.

The BBC has declined to remove the statue, citing Gill's status as one of the preeminent British artists of the 20th century.

The artwork is enhanced by elegant steel lines of longitude and latitude, a subtle scheme of small embedded lights and some audio installation linked to key output from the World Service.

At 10 pm daily, in line with the BBC News at Ten, a column of light shines 900 metres (3,000 ft) into the sky.

Broadcasting House is a central feature in Penelope Fitzgerald's novel Human Voices, published in 1980, where the lead characters work for the BBC during the Second World War.

[48] It is also the work place of Alexander Wedderburn in A. S. Byatt's 1995 novel Still Life,[49] and Sam Bell in Ben Elton's 1999 novel Inconceivable,[50] and also that of the evil nazi-sympathiser Ezzy Pound in Michael Paraskos's 2016 novel In Search of Sixpence.

"[52] On 7 November 2017, a statue of Orwell, sculpted by the British sculptor Martin Jennings, was unveiled, outside Broadcasting House.

These are words from his proposed preface to Animal Farm and a rallying cry for the idea of free speech in an open society.