Architects have swapped traditional building materials for sugar and spice to create an edible gingerbread city of the future at London’s V&A Museum, to show that urban planning can be fun, and tasty.
The annual exhibition put together by the Museum of Architecture, showcases buildings by architects, designers and engineers who had been asked to create a sustainable and inclusive city of the future.
“Whilst this might seem really crazy and the fact that we are working in gingerbread, this isn’t actually too far from the realms of the way that we are,” said Robert Nolan, an architect at APT.
“If you can see yourself having fun with just gingerbread and then transplant that to something a bit more realistic, actually it’s not too far off and actually design is fun.”
More than 60 structures have been baked and the city features a cable car made of liquorice, and cycle lanes and pedestrian route made entirely of sugar.
Holland Harvey Architects designed a modern homeless shelter. The practice is in the process of designing a real-life shelter for the British charity Shelter from the Storm.
“The idea of those that are forgotten Christmas time are remembered and actually that there is hope I suppose for, you know, that there are organisations out there that are providing kind of places for people at Christmas to be,” said architect Jonathan Harvey.
Among the gingerbread structures on display is also a pavilion designed by Foster and Partners that was built by a robot – a first for the exhibition, according to Melissa Woodford, founder and director of the Museum of Architecture.
The exhibition opens to the public on Saturday (December 8) and runs through January 6, 2019.