Adventures in Candyland: seven astounding gingerbread houses

By Matthew Hague | December 24, 2009

By Matthew Hague | 12/24/2009

The Chicago Tribune recently asked four local architects to submit designs for gingerbread houses, then had pastry chef Kimberly Schwenke turn the blueprints into sugary piles. While we thought the results were a little less than magical—this rethink of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye is the most eye-catching of the lot—the competition inspired us to seek out other edible edifices. The results are weird, delicious-looking and, in at least one case, a force of gentrification in gingerbread villages.

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In 2006, the Toronto Star convinced seven GTA architecture firms to build original gingerbread creations that would be auctioned off to benefit the Santa Claus Fund. This creation from Plant (of Nathan Phillips Square fame) brings contemporary landscape design ideology to an otherwise architecture-heavy discipline. [Toronto Star]
Photo by David Cooper, Toronto Star

For the past 17 years, Seattle’s Sheraton Hotel has been displaying cookie collaborations between local architects and chefs. This St. Petersburg–inspired creation from last year made us want to sip Stoli and don a fur hat. [Luxury Home Design]

Vancouver’s Creative Room attracted this eco-conscious candy house by Khai Foo and Elise Young of Solus Decor [http://www.solusdecor.com/] and Eastside Design [http://www.eastsidedesign.ca/]. It plays on the idea of an environmentally friendly house with “cocoa-mass qualities to mitigate sweet-loss.” [Inhabitat]

Mies van der Rohe’s minimalism doesn’t get any sweeter than this gingerbread version of the Farnsworth House, covered in fondant, poured sugar and sweet paste. The craftsmanship on the cookie version looks almost as delectable as the real thing. At $4,320, the price is anything but minimal. [Apartment Therapy]

For traditionalists who tend toward the gargantuan, the world’s largest gingerbread house, appropriately built in the enormous Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, looks suitably Victorian and tops out at 67 feet tall, with 1,496 square feet of confection. [Neat-o-Rama]

This cheeky take on an all-too-familiar sight won first prize in one of the gingerbread house competitions in Peddler’s Village. Starbucks—here dubbed “Santabucks”—apparently counts as a “significant building” in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. [Peddler’s Village]

It may not be a house, but this unattributed cookie version of a computer’s CPU gets big points for originality. We wouldn’t be surprised to learn that this is the only computer system in the world capable of running Vista without error messages. [Geekularity]

One thought on “Adventures in Candyland: seven astounding gingerbread houses”

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