High Design

When Joe Duffy’s award-winning design firm, Duffy & Partners, spun off from Fallon Worldwide six months ago, it didn’t take Joe long to relocate his office to Minneapolis’s downtown riverfront district, the neighborhood he and his wife, Patsy, call home. The empty nesters, who grew up just blocks from one another in south Minneapolis—“he was my second-grade boyfriend,” says Patsy—love everything about their Washburn loft: the natural light, contemporary styling, river view, and proximity to restaurants and nightlife.

INSPIRATION: “One of my dreams has always been to have a typical artist’s loft, where living space and working space can coincide,” Joe says. “And with our love of both contemporary things and history, this was the perfect place.”

STYLE SOURCES: “We rip a lot of pages out of home magazines,” Patsy says. “We had some furniture made because it was hard to find certain sizes—for instance, I wanted a great big coffee table. We also bought some pieces in New York and at Ligne Roset in Minneapolis.”

CENTRAL LOCATION: “Everything leads to downtown,” Joe says. “Getting to places outside of the city, like our cabin, a shopping center, or supermarket”—“or the airport, because Joe travels so much,” interjects Patsy—“only takes about ten minutes. You’re right off the freeway, but not on the freeway.”

EATING OUT: “My company [worked on] Rick Webb’s restaurants, Zelo, Bacio, and Ciao Bella, so we love those,” Joe says. “We love the little neighborhood bars too,” adds Patsy. “For a burger and a beer. We like the Loon and Maxwell’s or Whitey’s for just good old bar food. And we can walk there.”

EATING IN: “We love to cook,” Patsy says. Adds Joe, “We’ll have dinner parties where our friends bring things over, and we’ll have a group cooking experience.”

JUST ENOUGH SPACE: “We thought about adding a guest room, but our children both have homes here and we didn’t want to take away from the living spaces,” Patsy says. Joe adds: “Our cabin in Wisconsin is really kind of our family environment—we have lots of space for guests, our kids, and eventually their kids. The place in the city is much more about the two of us.”

Objet d’Art
“Our rope chair [lower right] was done by Droog Design—it’s kind of a combination of a chair and sculpture,” Joe says. “It’s rope dipped in resin, and it’s incredibly light. You can lift it with one finger, and yet it’s incredibly sturdy.” “We got it at Moss in New York, and we kept looking at it and we thought, ‘We have to have it,’ ” Patsy adds. “But people are afraid to sit in it.”