[2] The flats were originally let at high rents to wealthy residents, including Max Miller, Rex Harrison and Terence Rattigan, and features such as enclosed balconies and England's first penthouse suites made the 72-apartment, 11-storey building "one of the most desirable and sought-after addresses in Brighton and Hove".

Its reinforced concrete structure and steel-framed doors and windows were distinctive features, and other facilities included a ground-floor bank, partly enclosed balconies to every one of the 72 flats, and England's first penthouse suites.

[10] It received much praise at first: a 1936 edition of the Architects' Journal claimed that the building "thrill[ed] one to the marrow",[11] and Alderman Sir Herbert Carden, "the maker of modern Brighton" who was responsible for many interwar improvements in the Borough of Brighton,[12] was so taken with its Modernist style that he campaigned for every other building along the seafront to be demolished and replaced with Embassy Court-style housing, all the way from Hove to Kemp Town.

The leaseholders' association commissioned local architects Alan Phillips and Matthew Lloyd to undertake design work and Ove Arup and Partners for their structural engineering expertise.

Architect Alan Phillips, who had continued his association with the building during the "impasse in negotiations" which had characterised the previous three years, described Embassy Court as being "on the cusp between demolition and renovation" at a debate in November 2001, at which he announced a new plan to convert the lower storeys into a hotel.

[18] This brought to a conclusion a long and complex period of legal action; the judge observed that the ongoing battles between leaseholders, landlords and freeholders had been "more suited to a nursery school playground".

[11] Conran Group undertook a structural survey which showed that the concrete walls had not deteriorated as badly as expected: its director said that the building was in "a very poor state [but] perfectly salvageable".

The expected cost was £5 million,[24] and various sources of funding were proposed: money received from Portvale Holdings and from the leaseholders was to be used alongside National Lottery and European Union regeneration grants for which Bluestorm would apply.

[23] By September 2003, Conran had assembled a working group of engineers, designers and other professionals, and the plans included provision of a swimming pool and public facilities such as a restaurant, museum and art gallery by making use of underused areas of the building.

After a delay caused by poor weather,[30] the exterior hoardings and scaffolding were removed in early April 2005 to reveal new windows and a "smart cream concrete façade".

The second phase involved repairs at the rear, the promised replacement plumbing and heating systems, new lifts and new front doors, and was due to finish in September 2005.

[33] The earlier problems of poor security had been overcome, and Embassy Court was no longer "a haven for drunks, drug addicts and homeless people".

Embassy Court represented a transition from the pure Art Deco style which had been popular in the early 1930s, towards a "simplistic and plain" interpretation of Modernism.

[2][7][35] The horizontal emphasis is partly offset by the "nice vertical rhythm" of the slightly curving windows of the sun rooms; this effect is most noticeable on the east elevation.

[7] To the rear, the cantilevered effect is maintained, forming "access decks" which sweep diagonally upwards at the ends to house the external staircases.

[4][8][35] Other pioneering features included open-fronted balconies, lock-up garages and what the original managing agents Dudley Samuel and Harrison described as "sun-admitting Vista-Glass sun parlours".

[38] Architectural historians Antony Dale and Nikolaus Pevsner both observed that Embassy Court is "a good building in the wrong place",[11] in relation to its position adjoining the Brunswick Town development.

Dale noted that the latter's "carefully regulated proportions" are overpowered by the unsympathetic form of its 11-storey neighbour, making Embassy Court "a glaring example of architectural bad manners and worse town planning".

[39] Pevsner called Embassy Court "a good and historically interesting" building", "well designed in itself"—but criticised it as acting as a "bad neighbour" to the "serious Neoclassical [architecture]" of Brunswick Town.

[40] Likewise, Brighton historian Clifford Musgrave contrasted Embassy Court with its near-contemporary, Marine Gate, to the east beyond Kemp Town; although it was "another white concrete block of flats", he considered it more elegant and better because it did not intrude directly on any 19th-century architectural set-pieces.

[35] Former Mayor of Brighton Lord Lewis Cohen said in 1953: "It stands as a monument for all time to the lack of foresight of those who permitted such a conglomeration of architecture on our seafront.

Although "it seemed to some that the era of skyscrapers had started" locally—especially in the light of Herbert Carden's proposals for the seafront—it was only in the 1960s that multi-storey towers began to dominate the skyline of Brighton and Hove.

[41] By the start of the 21st century, public perception of Embassy Court was particularly poor: it was considered to be an "embarrassing eyesore",[3] "a filthy blot on the seafront",[31] a "grimy, rotting structure"[25] and "like something from the Third World".

[16] The third edition of The Cheeky Guide to Brighton, published in 2003, claimed Embassy Court looked like "Michael Jackson's face on a bad day".

[3] Brighton-born comedian Max Miller and actor Rex Harrison were two early residents;[8] Sir Terence Rattigan rented a flat there as well from 1960, but disliked it and soon moved to Marine Parade.