Even though Polish-born architect Andrzej Wejchert has long been an honorary Irishman, roots will out. He admits that the award which was presented to him in his home country by the President of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski, in December, for the best public building created during 1998 and 1999 in Warsaw, is particularly special.

The submission won out of a field of 136 entries. The building for which he won the award is the Sobanski Palace Complex, a building dating from 1876 in Warsaw's Old Town. The project, which proved controversial, involved converting the Palace into a businessmen's club, and building a new office complex in the grounds that would complement the older building.

Warsaw is where Andrzej Wejchert spent most of his life before leaving for Ireland in the 1960s. Andrzej and his wife Danuta had originally trained as architects in Warsaw, as had his sister Alexandra, who also moved here in 1965. (A sculptor whose best-known public work is probably the Freedom steel-winged piece outside the AIB buildings in Ballsbridge. She died in 1995.)

With the restrictions that communism placed on so many elements of life in Eastern Europe at that time, Andrzej and Danuta Wejchert were anxious for an opportunity to practise abroad.

The international architectural competition for designing elements of the new UCD campus at Belfield provided such an opportunity. The Wejcherts won the commission, and it was to be 25 years before Andrzej returned to Poland, even for a visit.

In 1970 the Arts Block was finished, in 1972, the water tower and administration block. Later, they were to return to design the sports centre.

After the initial project at UCD, there followed several other high-profile commissions, including the superb award-winning visitor centre at Ailwee Caves in Clare, with its chameleon-like quality of passing unnoticed amidst the stone landscape of the Burren.

The Sobanksi Palace Complex had been converted to various uses since it was built. The clients wanted to create a Polish Business Round Table Club within the old palace and also to build a new office complex. The Round Table Club is for the new businessmen of Poland and their clients, as well as capitalists and entrepreneurs who simply didn't exist even 10 years ago in the city.

"We wanted to respect the culture and tradition of the older building, and also to be uncompromisingly modern for the new building," Wejchert explains.

What they did to achieve this was to put all the utilities, such as the kitchens and toilets, underground in the cellars of the old palace, which also acted as an underground link with the new office building. Upstairs in the palace, they went for a pure historical reconstruction.

The new office, which stands at a right angle in the grounds, is composed of a type of mosaic of glass windows, the effect of which is like a waterfall of light. "It casts light and shadow, it's alive and changing, full of kinetic movement; very delicate, unlike the old buildings which are solid."

The new offices were, Wejchert admits, "very controversial". The contrast between the old and new is more than a difference of architectural styles, it is also a reflection of the huge political and social changes that the passing of time has brought to modern Poland: in this way, the Sobanski Palace Complex acts as a unique visual barometer for the citizens of Warsaw.

Back in Ireland, one of his firm's current projects is not unlike the earlier Ailwee Caves commission: it is drawing up plans for a visitor centre and environmental showcase museum at the disused coal mines in Arigna. The parts of the building which are over-ground will resemble coal seams. "The idea is to create a national showcase of alternative energy - hydro, solar, wind - to bring back employment to the area." Recent large projects include the Blanchardstown Shopping Centre in Dublin, and the county council offices in Galway. The Wejcherts now have some 40 architects working with them in their Baggot Street offices.

After almost four decades of working in Ireland, the recent changes in the urban landscape must be like watching a speeded-up film. "The only solution for Dublin is to put the transport underground," insists Wejchert.

They are just about to start working on a long-overdue revamp of the Ilac Centre, which started off as Ireland's first razzamatazzy-cum-public-spirited shopping centre, with a library at its centre, but which began to look dated and claustrophobic from the day it opened.

Since they will have to carry out the work while the building remains open, completion of the project will take until about 2002.