Tony Fretton Architects was founded in 1982 and is now headed
by partners Tony Fretton and James McKinney. The buildings
completed by the practice in London for the Lisson Gallery
in 1986 and 1992 continue to be internationally recognised
as exemplary spaces for art, for the architectural experiences
they offer and for their social engagement with the surrounding
city. The three aspects - exemplary functioning, rewarding
experience and productive engagement with the locale - are
the underlying motifs in all the subsequent work.
Following the Lisson
Gallery came a number of regional arts buildings that
combine international quality art spaces with a strong social
programme: ArtSway
centre for visual Arts in Sway Hampshire 1996; Quay
Arts Centre for visual and performing arts in Newport
Isle of Wight in 1998; Faith
House for artists with disabilities in rural Dorset 2000;
the gallery and store for the Arts Council Collection of Sculpture
collection at the Yorkshire
Sculpture Park in 2003; and the Camden
Arts Centre in London 2004, where the café and
garden are established as places for sociability in the neighbourhood
and London as a whole. Fuglsang
Kunstmuseum in Southern Denmark, the practice’s
most significant building for the display of art, opened in
January 2008 and has been shortlisted for the prestigious
Stirling Prize Building of the Year 2009.
The practice’s work in the arts also extends beyond
gallery buildings. Studios for artists have been realised
at ArtSway and Faith House, House
and Studio for Two Artists in Clerkenwell, 2005 and the
studio for Brad Lochore
in Shoreditch, 2008. Houses for collectors and artists comprise
the Red House (2001)
and the House for
Anish and Susanne Kapoor (2008), both in Chelsea London.
The practice has consistently been short-listed for international
competitions, culminating in commissions for the New
British Embassy Warsaw in 2003, Fuglsang
Kunstmuseum, Denmark in 2005, and a new Administrative
Centre in Deinze, Belgium in 2009.
Now an extensive practice, Tony Fretton Architects is building
across Europe: Tietgens
Ærgrelse, Copenhagen started on site this Spring
and two large-scale apartment projects in the Netherlands
are due to complete in early 2010.
An active writer and lecturer, Fretton is Professor, Chair
of Architectural Design & Interiors at Technical University
of Delft in the Netherlands and was Visiting Professor at
EPFL Lausanne in 1996, the Berlage Institute Amsterdam 1997
and the Graduate School of Design, Harvard USA from 2004-5.
In 2010-11 he will be visiting professor at ETH Zurich on
sabbatical from TU Delft.