Voice of London

A gingerbread city, designed by the Museum of Architecture, opened its doors right in time for the holiday season. Located at the Somerset House, the exhibition will definitely be crowned the sweetest exhibition of the year.

Gingerbread City is an annual exhibition that unites country’s leading architects, engineers and designers to achieve one goal – creating a futuristic sustainable city model entirely made of gingerbread, as well as starting a public debate about the cities we live in. 

Here is something that the participants of the exhibition had to say: 

“In an age of rapid urban growth and expansion, planning is crucial to a city’s ability to be competitive whilst supporting the wellbeing of its citizens. Poor planning is not only costly and time consuming, it can result in chronic stresses that weaken a city, like high unemployment and a lack of essential services, while worsening events like natural disasters.” – Euan Mills, head of digital planning at Connected Places Catapult.

“Transport is essential to modern society and is crucial in facilitating connectivity and transactions. However, transport impacts upon the environment across a range of scales: at the local scale, transport affects the air we breathe and the noise we hear.” – Dr Marc Stettler, senior lecturer at Imperial College London.

The Gingerbread City tradition began in 2016 in South Kensington. For the first time ever, it is held in Aldwych transport with this year’s theme focusing on transport. The participants had to think of original transportation for the imaginary inhabitants of the city. 

Foster + Partners, PDP London, PLP Architecture, Turner Works and Phase3 are amongst the participants this year. Newcomers Grimshaw, KPF, Hildrey Studio and HKS made their debut alongside 2018 winner, Atkins Global.

Gingerbread house-making workshops are being held in the exhibition. Gingerbread lovers are welcome to join the workshops from Thursday 5th December 2019 until Tuesday 7th January 2020.  

Tickets for this family-friendly workshop start at £35. 

Tickets for Gingerbread City: Saturday, 7 December 2019 – Sunday, 5 January 2020

Full Price: £9.00

Under 12’s: £7.00

Under 3’s: Free

Getting there: 

[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/embed?mid=1QsQMwPst89eDHaaGxvqYZBSZ0TSziPv3&w=640&h=350]

Address: Lancaster Rooms, New Wing, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R

Words: Neringa Ruseckaite

Photos: Neringa Ruseckaite