Articles & Periodicals

Open Plan Offices Affects Your Health
GUEST SPEAKER DR. JOHN HOLM, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, DEGW • MAY 2009
Open plan offices can lower productivity and make workers sick, according to a recent study by the Queensland University of Technology. Architects say it all depends on the design and the work flow.
So what are the pros and cons of open plan offices? Do they work best for certain jobs, and what are the alternatives?
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Richard Steer in Conversation with Dr. Frank Duffy
INTERVIEW WITH FRANK DUFFY • JUNE 2009
Click here to view Frank Duffy's perspective on existing and new buildings, design, and his new book Work and the City.
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DEGW on DAILY RE TV
Click here to view Italy's Daily RE TV covering DEGW and Oracle.

After about two years of construction for the renovations of Cinisello Balsamo, Oracle employees entered the spaces inaugurated in January 2009. The project has been conducted by DEGW Italy, renovation of the building as well as the interior design.
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Sustainable schools
SUSTAINABLE FM • MAY 2009 • BY GILES CRELLIN
Somewhere between £70-100 billion is the figure that represents England’s largest Capital build in the form of Building Schools for the Future. Not only is this an extraordinary sum of money creating a niche industry around all aspects of the school design from briefing to Facilities Management, but it also has begged questions to be asked at the highest governmental levels such as at the Select Committee level around the validity of the programme itself.
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Do we need the office anymore?
NEWSDAY • FEBRUARY 2009 • BY FRANK DUFFY
Is the tall and low office building that has totally dominated the urban and suburban landscape becoming obsolete? It would seem so.
New ways of working made possible by information technology should create new office architecture. There is less need for individual desk-centered space and more need for widely distributed spaces of formal and informal gathering. People can do their solitary work anywhere, any time, yet they still need face-to-face interactions.
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What If? Lifelong Learning
BUILDING FUTURES • GROWING BY DEGREES: UNIVERSITIES IN THE FUTURE OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT • BY ANDREW HARRISON
What if education becomes integrated into a single policy framework, rather than divided up between those responsible for children and those concerned with adults? What is childhood, youth and maturity in fact cease to be meaningful categories for thinking about learning? And what if universities cater to this shift by spreading out their already very varied functions across space and age groups?
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Building appraisal: A personal view
JOURNAL OF BUILDING APPRAISAL • 2009 • BY FRANK DUFFY
This paper describes how between 1985 and 1995, in one building type — the office — a form of Building Appraisal became an operational reality in DEGW, a London-based architectural practice.
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Lumbering to Extinction in the Digital Field
HARVARD DESIGN MAGAZINE • FALL/WINTER 2009 • BY FRANK DUFFY
The global dominance of North American tall and low office building typologies throughout the 20th century was nearly total. Skylines worldwide and the physical and social structure of most suburbs are testimonies to this enormous technological, economic, social, cultural, and, of course, architectural achievement. Even the Roman Empire failed to achieve such hegemony.
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Evaluating the Office
ECO STRUCTURE • JUNE 2008 • BY ELLIOT FELIX
The nature of work is changing, yet too often our workplaces do not reflect the way we work, who we are or what we value. Simultaneously work is becoming more collaborative and mobile, causing organizations to rethink the balance of individual and shared spaces. In fact, given that people can work almost anywhere using mobile technology today, the business world is examining the shifting value of working in an office.
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Enhancing Productivity Through Intelligent Design
BUSINESS TODAY • AUGUST 2007 • BY FRANK DUFFY
Buildings may not have a life of their own, but they do have a bearing on the life- and work- of their occupants.
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