For those of you who were dazzled by last year’s ARCHDUEL, with the razors slicing and the foam core flying, here’s an overview of the two firms competing in this year’s duel.

This year’s contestants are both landscape architecture firms with a green thumb and an eye for urban revitilization. Both firms work locally in New York and have an impressive amount of worldwide projects either constructed or in the works. Undoubtedly the new frontier in architecture is urban renewal, especially in a burg such as New York with its many forgotten construction sites being used by Balmori Assoc. and Field Operations as a palette for found art masterpieces including a lot of plants. Plants are in this millenia.

Field Operations, founded in 1998, is a contemporary urban design practice that specializes in high-profile projects and an emphasis on designing for public spaces. With awards and completed masterpieces too numerous to mention, let’s touch on a single design: they’re revolutionary proposal for the World Trade Center site, including a massive conglomeration of street-side and mid-story public spaces, gardens among the offices, with trees in the middle of their ingenius skyscraper vision. Although this proposal wasn’t chosen, Field Operations is revitilizing everything from abandoned elevated tracks (the High Line in West Manhattan) to turning landfills into invigorating park space (Fresh Kills Park in Staten Island.) These habitats are giving the cities back to the pedestrians, and in a sharp, modern way.

Balmori Associates are also redesigning the

tree in a variety of aesthetically creative ways. Their work on the open spaces at Vassar College might make a trip to Poughkeepsie in order. The lush use of flora gives each quad and garden the delicate look of a work of art, and the concept of Robert Smithson’s Floating Island, a cargo barge combined with a garden that circled Manhattan, was such a brilliant idea it made us feel dumb for not thinking of it first.
Even their websites are eye-catching and intelligently designed.

Check them out and then try and contain your excitement as the ARCHDUEL II gets closer and closer with each passing moment. Tomorrow’s the day. Prepare yourselves.