![]() In the seven years since he became a partner, Duffy has shaken up the firm, bringing in outside critics to measure the work of its 33 partners and hundreds of associates, and using his place on the firm's Evaluation and Compensation committee to prod designers whose work he doesn't think is up to par. The New York Times's Herbert Muschamp, no fan of SOM, called Duffy's design for a gossamer addition to a Madison Avenue office building "heavenly stuff."īut Duffy's efforts to remake SOM are at least as impressive as his buildings. At Connecticut's Greenwich Academy he worked with James Turrell to turn the lobby and library of a new building into glowing "light chambers." At the same time Duffy's commercial projects seem surprisingly uncompromised by market pressures. And where collaborating with artists once meant choosing the right Picasso or Calder for a plaza, Duffy has delved deeper. In a firm known for its skyscrapers and sprawling corporate campuses, he has designed a series of small projects-from a grade school to a science museum-that are innovative, stylish, and well crafted. Twenty years later the extent to which he is accomplishing that goal surprises everyone-except perhaps Duffy. At the time SOM had a haughtiness that the soft-spoken Pennsylvanian (who had already spent four years in the firm's Washington office) couldn't abide.Īnd so, before he even got to the elevator, Duffy had an agenda: to make both SOM, and the buildings it creates, less monolithic. ![]() "I didn't like the impression of opulence," he says. But Duffy objected to more than just the retro sensibility. "Then I found out it had been done three years before." The firm that had created iconic corporate headquarters for Lever Bros., Chase Manhattan Bank, and Union Carbide in the 1950s and '60s was in a rut. I thought it was a period piece," he says. ![]() ![]() When Roger Duffy arrived at the New York offices of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for a job interview in 1985, he found himself in "a sea of travertine. Published in Metropolis, December 24, 2003 ![]()
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