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Gingerbread City is back with sweet architectural designs in London and New York

2023-12-11T13:42:00-05:00

London's Museum of Architecture has revealed the 2023 slate of participating design firms in its annual Gingerbread City exhibition, along with an expanded American component taking place in New York City through the end of the holiday season.

For the dual city festival, participants were charged with interpreting the role water plays in urban development. Their designs comprised four zones (Urban Floodplain, Canal City, Frozen Landscape, and Underwater + Floating City) in both locations, with a fifth Desert Landscape area presenting a “sweet feast for the eyes” in New York.

BubbleBurst Bonbon Museum: Spherical Symphony of Sweet Delights by Atelier Ten © Luke O’Donovan

Bakewell Bridge by Allies and Morrison © Luke O’Donovan

Highlights from the more than 100 firms that contributed to the London exhibition include a BubbleBurst Bonbon Museum by Zaha Hadid Architects, Jammy Jubilee by Foster + Partners, Atelier Ten’s The Gingerbread Factory, the Bakewell Bridge by Allies and Morrison, a...

Gingerbread City returns to the Museum of Architecture in London

2022-12-16T12:19:00-05:00

The popular Gingerbread City holiday exhibition has returned to London’s Museum of Architecture featuring some tasty designs from top firms organized into five “mini-cities” master-planned for the second consecutive year by Madeleine Kessler Architecture.

Each of the small cities represents global polar, temperate, continental, desert, and tropical climate zones. The museum’s founder Melissa Woolford told AJ in a preview of this year’s show that put forward “‘many brilliant ideas for how to tackle the challenge of building for different climates,” adding: “By bringing all these ideas together, Museum of Architecture hopes to inspire meaningful conversations around how we can act to help save our planet.”

The exhibition runs until January 2nd in the museum’s 6-7 Motcomb Street space in Belgravia. Let’s have a look at the competing teams with a selection of enticing photos. (h/t to AJ for the project descriptions.)

Desert Island. Image: © Luke O'Donovan

Liquorice Library (UHA) — "in th...

Gingerbread City is back at London's Museum of Architecture just in time for the holiday rush

2021-12-14T15:17:00-05:00

A homespun holiday tradition has returned to London’s Museum of Architecture for the fifth consecutive year with a tasty new selection of sweet entries from some of the industry’s biggest names.

Gingerbread, likely the low-carbon concrete of food building materials, is the focus of the museum’s annual Gingerbread City exhibition on view until the second week of January.

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The exhibition is master-planned by Madeleine Kessler, the architect in charge of curating the British pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, and is currently open to the public at the MoA’s pop-up space on Motcomb Street in Belgravia.

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According to the museum: “This year's exhibition explores the theme ‘nature in the city,’ asking architects, engineers, and designers to use their design expertise (and ba...

Tate Modern unveils a visual feast for the Great British Bake Off

2021-11-24T19:19:00-05:00

The Tate apparently showed off a gingerbread model for the finale of the Great British Bake Off. This year’s winning entry for the BBC Channel 4 competition was an oversized remake of the Mad Hatter’s tea party from one-time architecture critic Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

The edible museum model was produced by food artists Caitlin Levin and Henry Hargreaves. The duo originally prepared several models of different museums like the MAXXI and Guggenheim for the 2013 edition of Miami Art Basel they said are inspired by each building’s unique form.

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“We wanted to really focus on architecturally heavy galleries. Ones that were a mixture of the iconic and ones that people might not know, because a lot of it’s about learning and playing," Hargreaves said at the time. "Once we figured which galleries we wanted to do, we focused on certain angles and great shots and then we’d make a foamcore model of the gal...

Gingerbread City: Zaha Hadid Architects, Foster + Partners and others reveal their sweetest designs

2017-12-19T17:30:00-05:00

Some of the world's biggest architecture firms have been competing for plots in this winter's tastiest property market -- the Gingerbread City. Recently opened at the Museum of Architecture in London, the miniature metropolis is brimming with contemporary -- and almost entirely edible -- buildings. Around 50 companies specializing in architecture, engineering and landscaping have baked and built structures for the project.

Photo: Luke Hayes.

If you're in London this week, make sure to get into the holiday spirit the architectural way and stop by the Museum of Architecture's Gingerbread City before it closes this Friday — and nothing but cookie crumbs will remain.

Competing gingerbread bridges (gingerbreadges?) by Periscope, Hopkins, and reForm Architects. Photo: Luke Hayes.

The roster of around 50 participating architecture, engineering, and landscaping firms includes some recognizable names like Zaha Hadid Architects, Foster + Partners, NBBJ, Studio Egret West, Pitman Tozer, among others.

An edible "mixed-used" building by Cooke Fawcett Architects. Photo: Luke Hayes.

All images courtesy of the Museum of Architecture.