Foreign office: with their British Embassy in Warsaw, Tony Fretton Architects fuse antiquity, modernism and car-cockpit chic.

Few would naturally associate the work of Tony Fretton with that of global giant SOM. What could possibly link the architect of small-scale idiosyncratic gems, such as the Lisson Gallery and the Red House, with the great tower builders? With his artisan/architect demeanour most would expect more obscure references; more mystery, metaphor, or magic dust. However, when discussing the architects, individuals, objects and places that have influenced his work, Fretton puts on no intellectual camouflage. When considering the typology of the office building, he cites his influence as 'Mies via SOM'. In his mind, ideas and even the 's' word--style--are fully transmissible, and in conversation, his slow and deliberate speech reveals ambiguous voices; authority and humility merge to render statements as questions and a surprisingly playful attitude reveals liberal fusions that allow him to freely borrow from antiquity, Mies, Koolhaas, and the (as was) British car industry; as a British eccentric therefore, perhaps Fretton was an ideal choice to design one of the country's latest embassies.

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Following widespread recognition for his Red House completed in Chelsea in 2002, Fretton was invited to participate in a competition alongside established names--Chipperfield, Benson + Forsyth, Denton Corker Marshall--and emerging newcomers, Sarah Hare and David Adjaye. Commending the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's commitment to promote the appointment of lesser known architects, and respectfully recognizing specific qualities in each of the other short-listed proposals, Fretton credits the selection of his proposal to his response to the site; placing a 5000[m.sup.2] office building and 900[m.sup.2] Residence on a 0.5 hectare site in a context of villas and walled gardens.

Situated in south-central Warsaw, close to Lazienkowski Park, adjacent to the Swedish Embassy's nineteenth-century stucco villa and opposite the Polish Prime Minister's Palladian home, Fretton's response sets two buildings, one against another, in a subtle play of formality and informality. Set forward to announce its street presence, the five-storey Embassy is Classical in composition, with a two-storey attic set above a three-storey base. The potentially overbearing symmetry and dominance is subverted by the disposition of the Residence--detached, set back and twisted away from the principal geometry--and through the expression and continuity of the horizontal datum that links the two and aligns them with adjacent three-storey properties. Though distinct in form, orientation and materials, the buildings are united by a courtyard, entered through a low-lying gatehouse.

With each building representing distinct typologies, Fretton's team considered the nature of the building's image to the outside world. What should each represent? Anticipating a complex competition and design process, with a multi-headed client and a demanding brief, they chose well-known models to express their interpretation of the brief. So, the Residence was articulated as a traditional English house--deriving its form from its ability to comfortably and splendidly host social events alongside the everyday life of the ambassador and his family. In contrast, the Embassy was to be a refined office block, practical and symbolic with a lineage extending from the Uffizi (Vasari's 1550s Government administration office building for the Medicis) to the Seagram building and beyond. As if to demystify the brief and reduce the programme to essentials, the buildings were to be simple in form and conventional in nature; efficient in plan, predictable in construction and adaptable to the client's evolving requirements; buildings that make no unnecessary attempt to be anything particularly new.

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As an office block--albeit refined--the facade of the Embassy gave

Fretton and his team the opportunity to reconsider notions of institutional representation. As a political liberal, as well as a design liberal, he is proud of Western democracy and speaks with disappointment of American policy decisions to place all new embassies on out of town sites, and of the mixed messages given by barricaded embassies that--like military sites--are designed to defend and to scare. In response to such trends, Fretton's preoccupation was not to design a facade that looked defensive, but rather calm and secure; communicating a confidence in openness to regimes that want exactly the reverse--fear and suspicion. So, with large areas of glass, broken only by stone panels that pass over the floor zones, exposed Miesian mullions and corner detailing bring Classical order, complete with fluted details. Within this, robustness is expressed with large glazing sections, and refinement through the choice of materials; mullions, bronze powder-coated externally and veneered with timber internally, set in front of leather clad columns and sharp edged unbroken ceilings. Dressed stone is then applied to the Embassy's courtyard elevation, resonating with adjacent stone cladding and bronzed window frames of the Residence. While excited by the prospect of building this major public building, Fretton has reservations. He is mortified, for example, that the security demands of the brief made it virtually impossible to pursue a naturally ventilated solution, and is conscious that government sponsored projects need to recognize the commercial vulnerability of the emerging practices they want to employ. However, with the project currently at tender stage, it is to be hoped that Fretton's much admired sensibilities will be realized; that his exceptionally well considered material composition, his surprising and ambiguous scale-shifting spatial sequences, and his adaptation and synthesis of Classical and contemporary motifs will be free to express themselves, without overt self-consciousness or wilful attention-seeking pretence; rich, yet appropriately blank and suitably stoic to invite generations of new meanings, projected readings, and uses. In morphing British stereotypes, Fretton loves what Vivienne Westwood did for the stuffy hunting jacket, and here in Warsaw likens his leather, bronze and veneered building to the great British Jaguar; a static super-stretched limousine, parked outside the ambassador's house. A note of caution, however, as with all fine cars--it will need a regular wax and polish.

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