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London's Gingerbread City goes high-tech for 2018

Eat Your Heart Out

London's Gingerbread City goes high-tech for 2018

The sprawling Gingerbread City is back in London for another year, bringing the biggest names in European architecture together for an exercise in edible design. Over 60 studios have contributed gingerbread buildings to the Museum of Architecture’s annual holiday exhibition, bringing an abundance of sugar glass to the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) until January 6, 2019.

The 1:100 scale city was again master planned and sponsored by Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design, and like last year’s installation, champions progressive urbanist ideas such as sustainability and accessible mass transit. Rooftop (candy) farming, a stadium, high rises, shorter multifamily housing, a botanical garden, college campus, opera house, and more are all present.

Pitman Tozer Architects designed the hive-themed RecoverBee Centre.
Pitman Tozer Architects designed the hive-themed RecoverBee Centre. (Luke Hayes)

Foster + Partners went high-tech for their contribution this year, using a robot arm to construct a serpentine, open-air pavilion reminiscent of BIG’s Unzipped. London-based Apt created the SugarLoop, a walkable green corridor through the city that references the High Line but also includes several literal loop-the-loops. Zaha Hadid Architects stacked sheets of rounded gingerbread to create a ribbed concert hall that wouldn’t look out of place in their real-world portfolio. Hopkins Architects contributed the Bakewell Bridge, which features a variety of different gingerbread people meant to bolster the city’s diversity.

Foster + Partners' stacked pavilion was robotically constructed.
Foster + Partners’ stacked pavilion was robotically constructed. (Luke Hayes)

The professionally-designed buildings aren’t available to eat, but the Museum of Architecture is offering workshops on 10 different days for families who want to construct their own gingerbread masterpieces. Not in London? New Yorkers can check a more staid, but equally impressive, scale recreation of NYC’s landmarks rendered in cookies at the Columbus Circle Williams Sonoma.


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