Frank Duffy Collection

Reference: FRANK DUFFY COLLECTION                    Date: c. 1964-2015                    Extent: about 350 volumes

Books on the shelves of the Frank Duffy Collection.
Books on the shelves of the Frank Duffy Collection.

Francis Cuthbert Duffy or Frank Duffy (born 1940 in Berwick-upon-Tweed) is a British architect. He co-founded DEGW, an architectural consultancy named for its four founders: Frank Duffy, Peter Eley, Luigi Giffone and John Worthington.

Duffy was educated at St Cuthbert’s Grammar School in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In 1959 he went to London University to study at the Architectural Association with a Leverhulme Scholarship. Between his fourth and final years of study he visited Hamburg in Germany to see some examples of burolandschaft or office landscaping that he had read about. This proved to be a very inspiring trip; he wrote his thesis on burolandschaft and then continued working and writing on office landscaping throughout his career. 

After graduation, Duffy took a job at the National Building Agency, working on housing while still keeping up his research and writing on office landscaping. When Duffy left the NBA, he moved to the USA, spending time at both Berkeley and Princeton Universities, the latter of which being where he completed his PhD.  

In 1971, Duffy returned to London and soon co-founded DEGW with Peter Eley, Luigi Giffone and John Worthington. In the same year, he also returned to his relationship with the Architectural Association, and the associated Architectural Press. He began work on a series of articles for the Architects Journal, ‘Planning Office Space’. Over the 70s, 80s and 90s, DEGW expanded across the continents.

Biographical information was taken from the transcript of the British Library National Life Stories interview with Frank Duffy by Geraint Franklin from 2013, available here.  

The Frank Duffy Collection includes c. 150 books by Duffy himself with monographs, edited books and full issues of periodicals and journals. Also in the collection are around 400 offprints of articles authored by Frank Duffy.  

It is an open access book collection and can be found on the open access library corridor, accessible from the Reading Room at the University of Reading Special Collections. 

MORE INFORMATION 

  • The books, journals and offprints are fully catalogued and searchable on the online catalogue. 

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