The smell is overpowering, cheese is sliced, clumped, and shredded, pieces of dress are used as model-making material, and Cansei de ser Sexy is playing on the background. This is the scene most of the night for LVHRD's ArchDuel III. On the stage we find two four-woman teams representing two of New York City's leading Landscape Architecture firms. On one corner we have Balmori Associates' Killian O'Brien and Sarah
Wayland-Smith, who are tonight's challengers. On the other corner we find the team challenged by O'Brien and Wayland, via a mailed white glove no less, comprised of Field Operation's Maura Rockcastle and Sierra Bainbridge. The Balmori team is dressed in matching green outfits, Field Operations in self-designed black and white dresses. Both teams are confident up on stage enjoying a night which they began with a previously unknown project brief and list of materials that amazed everyone: 25 pounds of cheese and, to the delight of audience members, a few crowns of broccoli.

This energetic and creative crowd of a few hundred people is what Matthew Spangler, partner of the happy corp and co-organizer of this event, lives for. Speaking over the music he tells me that "This is what is all about, bringing young creative people together, having a good time, and letting them see what each other do." And to the extent that I was able to see, LVHRD was successful. One was as likely to talk to dancers, real estate developers, publishers, graphic designers, advertisers, and artists as you were to a landscape or architectural designer. The ArchDuel is but one of many similar events in different creative fields that LVHRD produces every year, but Matthew excitedly tells me that ArchDuel I was the first event they organized and that its success encouraged them to expand.

Although ArchDuel can be seen as just a fun time with wacky materials, LVHRD goes out of their way to tackle difficult and important issues in their project briefs. Last year's brief created a hypothetical scenario in which the city of New York is flooded due to global warming and a new architecture school and public space is needed for New New York. This year's brief was no less ambitious, Balmori Associates and Field Operations were asked to design green roofs for a world in which environmental catastrophe has made it compulsory to make sure that cities and more specifically their landscapes collect water, clean the air, provide food, and create their own energy. The brief was a perfect opportunity for the two teams, whose members work in offices that view environmental stewardship as key to good design, to teach something about design that is both creative and sustainable to a crowd mostly unfamiliar with the world of landscape architecture.

After the event I had a chance to chat with the Balmori Associate's team and to ask some questions. The following is an excerpt from that conversation.

Quilian Riano (QR)- Archinect
Killian O'Brien (KO)- Balmori Associates
Sarah Wayland-Smith (SW)- Balmori Associates



QR: What sort of training (if any) did you undertake to prepare for the competition?

SW: No training, we wanted to come in fresh for the competition.

KO: We didn't do any preparation for the competition, but I did mentally prepare a few weeks before by seeing 'Tears of the Black Tiger' to get in the spirit of the duel.

QR: Why did you choose to challenge Field Operations?

SW: We've competed with them on several public projects in the past and we knew they would be good competitors.

KO: We chose to challenge Field Operations because we often compete for the same jobs as them, and we thought it would be interesting to bring that competition into another arena.. filled with cheese.

QR: What was your reaction to the brief and its strong green position?

SW: We were really excited about the topic -- Balmori Associates has started a network of green roofs on several manufacturing buildings in Long Island City, NY that now totals over 46,000 square feet. We're very committed to the development of this sustainable technology, particularly in dense urban areas such as NYC, where green roofs can help alleviate some of our worst environmental problems. All of our landscape projects combine a sustainable, low-impact approach with interesting designs concepts.

KO: The 'green' brief was a great way to educate people about the possibilities of sustainable design.

QR: Please describe your take on the project and your intention.

SW: We wanted to create a series of interconnected green roofs with a rainwater catchment system so that additional irrigation for the cultivating vegetables wouldn't be necessary. Some areas would have a shallow system covered with a mix of sedums to absorb rainwater, capture airborne pollutants and insulate the building both on the horizontal and vertical surfaces of the architecture. Other areas would have deeper levels of planting medium to grow vegetables sold in a green market also on the roofs. We made retractable plastic roofs too so that produce could be grown year-round.

KO: We also implemented other sustainable elements into the design, such as energy harnessing solar collectors.

QR: How did you feel about the choice to use cheese as the main modeling material? What were the challenges and benefits of using this material?

SW: I think that cheese was a good modeling material to work with, although I didn't realize how brittle it was…we definitely had some structural problems with our bridges.

KO: Cheese was a really difficult material to work with. We hoped to exploit its translucent quality, but we quickly realized the scale made it hard to do this. We were also surprised at the lack of tensile strength it had when we tried to stretch it into bridges. The benefits of working with cheese are not something we explored.

QR: Where you satisfied with your project/model?

SW: We might have gotten a little carried away with our model in the heat of the moment.

KO: Our project idea was solid, but we were disappointed in the results of our model. We felt very rushed, and in hindsight, we thought could have made a more successful use of the cheese.

QR: What would you change if you had a chance?

SW: I think I would have slowed down a bit when building the model, maybe eaten some cheese and crackers.

KO:We regretted not experimenting with the material more. Looking back, we thought of different ways we could have used the material, and even thought about using the model base in different ways to create the desired structural qualities that the cheese did not provide

QR: What did you learn?

SW: Keep it simple.

KO: A friend of mine, who competed in a previous duel, told me it was a no-holds barred event, and advised me to cheat and intimidate the competition as much as possible. I learned that he was right.

QR: What do you think the audience learned?

SW: I hope that the audience saw the potential of green roofs to transform urban centers and to bring huge expanses of green (yellow in this case) to the impervious surfaces of cities.

KO: Hopefully the audience learned something about the possibilities of more sustainable design, such as green roofs.

QR: Why do you think LVHRD made a point of finding two all female teams?

KO: I can say that architecture is a privileged, male dominated field. Landscape tends to have more prominent females, but it is still a privileged and elitist world. The percentages of females and ethnic minorities in these fields is astonishingly low. The intent of the female dominated duel, was to call attention to this inequality in the architecture field. It is fascinating how many people have mentioned that all female groups participated; I am curious if gender was an issue last year when all four participants were male.

QR: Had you been to LVHRD events before?

SW: No, this was the first time

KO: No, but I hope to attend more of them in the future.


Creative Commons License


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License .
/Creative Commons License