Hi! Welcome to Gingerbread City!
We’ve been expecting you.
The Toronto Society of Architects’ Gingerbread City is a fantastical and diverse metropolis where you can eat the walls and taste the lamp posts while taking a (virtual) stroll! This year’s city is filled with unique creations built by architects, bakers and clever place makers, including tasty bay-and-gables, towering modernist bakes and even timely sugary clinics.
Ready to explore? Click on the images below to take a closer look of these edible creations, see additional contacts including pictures and videos, and learn more about their design!
2020 Showcase: Home
In a year when our homes have been top of mind, this year’s call asked our gingerbread makers to explore what the word “home” means to them. Our 2020 showcase includes submissions by all kinds of households and groups exploring a wide range of ideas of home, from buildings to rooms, parks to memories. In this year where we have all to stay apart, thank you bakers for welcoming us into your homes!
Materials include icing, gingerbread, runts, gumballs, thread, jujubes, cardboard, popsicle sticks, toothpicks, and crushed mints.
Everyone is Home Alone this year ACK Architects
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"The Topography is constructed of stacked gingerbread.
The trees are spun sugar
The A-Frame cottage is cast sugar glass. "
Sugar Shack Timothy Birchard and Mikael Sydor
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Materials include gingerbread, miscellaneous candy sparkles, and gummy trees
Bellwoods Lodge Great Lake Studio (Rick, Maggie & Levi)
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Ingredients included home-baked gingerbread (both with corn syrup and molasses to achieve the different colours); jolly ranchers and butterscotch candy for the windows; royal icing to put it all together and to pipe the evergreens; graham cracker balconies; pocky and gum balls for the light fixtures.
Jane-Exbury Tower Joël León Danis
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Izenville is a city comprising entirely modern, Izen-designed homes, designed to foster communal living and a healthier lifestyle. The city is designed for a sustainable future. All building materials are edible, all waste materials are edible, all goods are purchased for the inhabitants in group purchases from local retailers, and the whole city is equipped with smart technology. This city was assembled digitally from remotely-constructed homes as the construction team is all working from home at this time to keep the city’s inhabitants, as well as the other construction workers, safe.
Izenville Izen Architecture
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Materials include a store bought gingerbread kit with gingerbread, icing, and candies!
Santa’s Workshop Luke Moss Moulding
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Materials include gingerbread (structure), royal icing (mortar), shreddies (windows), jujubes and smarties (decorative flourishes), cashews (more decorative flourishes), pecans (quoining), cranberries (vertical trim), almonds (horizontal trim), candy canes (flags); swedish fish (fish swimming in the moat).
Kings and Queens of the Castle James Mallinson, Elsa Lam and son
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I used the Gingerbread Architect's recipe recommended on the TSA website for almost everything! The windows and belltower are spun sugar (sugar + corn syrup in the microwave). The icing is the royal icing on the TSA website mixed with a little gingerbread batter. Covering everything is a little powdered sugar.
Candy & Light Jocelyn Squires
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Materials include gingerbread, royal icing, pretzels, Bulk Barn "yummies", and Jolly Ranchers
Twin House Beatrice D’Angelo
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This submission is made of gingerbread only!
Tropical Paradise SUMO project
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There are no non-edible components (except lighting). Yes, we made a cylindrical gingerbread (it was a challenge). Materials used include gingerbread, melted sugar (for structurally important components), royal icing, candies, chocolates, and one vermicelli noodle.
We wired in some micro LED lights inside running along the ceiling of the gingerbread house to brighten it in pictures.
Better Days Ahead Fly Through
Better Days Ahead! Yvonne Chan & Katherine Lui
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Materials include gingerbread, chocolate gingerbread, royal icing, corn syrup icing (two colours), wafer cookies, and shredded coconut
Ginger Bay-and-Gable Michelle Chan
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In addition to gingerbread and royal icing, we used all edible materials (both sweet and savory) to create each unit, including but not limited to: wafer cookies, graham crackers, rice paper, gum drops and gummies, soba noodles, tortilla, celery, vitamins, sugar glass, edible paint, marshmallows, peanut butter cups, chocolate, caramel, life savers, licorice, melba toast, rosemary, Fruit Roll Ups, Pez, M&Ms, gumballs, cereal, fondant, sprinkles, pretzels, vanilla wafers, rice crackers, coarse salt, orange peel, seaweed.
Sid Smith Sweet Stack Fac. of Arts & Science, University of Toronto
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"Materials include:
For the house — gingerbread, PEZ candy, snowball gumballs, black licorice rope, royal icing, fondant (for the house)
For the planters — Marshmallows, white chocolate, fondant, green licorice/gummies
For the snow — Shredded coconut, icing powder.
For the interiors — Pretzel floor, Christmas tree (green candyballs), Runts, ice cream cone."
GTA Ed.: Mid-Century Holidays Romy Poletti
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Materials include gingerbread, Royal Icing, candy canes, candied nuts & seeds, every-flavour jelly beans, 'choco minis', candied ginger, candied citrus peel, marshmallows, After Eights' chocolate patties (solar panels), menthol hard candies (for glass), dried goji berries, slivered almonds, and icing sugar for snow.
Sol-a-bode Lea Wiljer
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Materials include construction gingerbread, royal icing, hard candies melted for the windows, various holiday candies.
Home Alone (& socially distanced) Marie Buban and son
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Materials include marble swirl cookies with tahini and black cocoa powder, candy canes, melted Jolly Rancher glass panes, royal icing and festive Smarties.
The Edible Barcelona Pavilion Kurt Kraler
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This year MOSS SUND’s gingerbread competition theme is Together / Apart. Since creating the gingerbread competition in 2017, it has become a tradition that has brought our office together during the holidays for festive fun and collaboration. Like many other architectural firms this year, we find ourselves working in the safety of our own homes, apart from our colleagues & collaborating virtually - together with each other and our clients - on our wonderful projects. In this spirit, we have each created an object made of birdseed and other edible bird treats that reflect our newfound home work spaces. As the spirit of giving is so important at this of time year, even more so this year because of the pandemic, the Ginger Bird Houses help keep our feathered friends fed and healthy as the cold months approach. We envision birds flying between each of our birdhouses, connecting our homes and each other while we wait for spring.
Our entries are all over the map! See if you can find them.
Investigation into the possibilities for rammed seed in edible birdhouse construction. A double walled form was used. Various bird seed mixes and treats combined with edible glue were rammed into the form to create a layered bird buffet topped with festive pumpkin seeds and goji berries.
Hung outside my bunky home office, located near the Scarborough Bluffs, in a backyard frequented by many varieties of birds as well as squirrels, skunks and the occasional deer – I am curious to see who will visit.
Materials include outdoor songbird Seed Mix, Premium Wild Bird Seed Mix, Nyjer Seed for Birds, Dried Apple, Dried Wild Blueberries, Raw Pumpkin Seeds, Goji Berries, Dried Cranberries, Gelatin, Water, Flour, Corn Syrup. Cardboard form. Wire to hang.
My submission to this year's gingerbread competition is an extension of my new found joy of plant parenthood. The object is a bird planter made entirely of seeds, a nod to being rooted in my West Queen West neighbourhood, a celebration of its artistic vibes as I threw and sculpted the piece by hand. I wanted to think beyond the typical decorative elements of a gingerbread house and offer something for the birds to actually utilize- an act of place-making by creating a feeder, welcoming them to enjoy some seeds, sharing the rooftop views with me.
Materials include outdoor songbird Seed Mix, Premium Wild Bird Seed Mix, Nyjer Seed for Birds, Dried Apple, Dried Wild Blueberries, Raw Pumpkin Seeds, Goji Berries, Dried Cranberries, Gelatin, Water, Flour, Corn Syrup. Cardboard form. Wire to hang.
Situated on the edge of a steep cliff of sunflower seeds, the ginger bird house on the cliff overlooks the suburban neighbourhood. Pretzel sticks form the structure of the birdseed walls, as well as the pretzel deck overhanging over the cliff. Dried cranberries highlight the roof’s ridge, pumpkin seeds decorate the façade, plump popcorn bushes are landscaped around the house – all providing a colourful and tasty treat for the neighbourhood birds.
A cozy and tasteful traditional backyard retreat for the birds. Formed from birdseed and an edible binding agent and cured into a solid mass, the house is designed for the birds and constructed to withstand the curiosity of their four-legged bushy tailed earthbound urban friends. The dehydrated orange roof shingles are a visible, and tasty, beacon visible to the birds from afar.
Materials include Birdseed, edible binder (flour, corn syrup, gelatin), dehydrated oranges, lemons, and limes.
Fabricated from a series of multi-coloured hearts, this ginger bird house pays tribute to all the front line workers who sowed seeds of hope for our city during 2020.
The house consists of a main dwelling unit and a laneway suite to increase housing for the birds, or provide a work from home space for the early bird. The multi-colored hearts illuminate the units, casting changing glows and reflections as the day progresses.
Materials include gingerbread, cranberries, dried apricots, sunflower seeds, bird seeds and sugar ice.
This oasis, a respite from urban life for city birds, is a pretty little getaway, complete with chimney, thatched roof and gardens. Built with gingerbread pieces as a template, the sides were created using a sheet pan approach. Stuck together with edible glue and decorated with Apricots, Cranberries and Pumpkin seeds, it is sure to be a home away from home in the Beach. So far very popular with squirrels, I hope to attract our feathered friends as well.
Materials include gingerbread, royal icing, jelly bellied, coloured wafers, and hard candy
Ticky Tacky
Little boxes made of Ticky Tacky Pamela Bruneau
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Materials include custom made gingerbread with the construction recipe on the TSA competition page, royal icing from a recipe provided by the TSA, candies for stained glass windows, silver balls, coloured chocolate balls (green), blue sugar, chewable gum tablets, black food colouring.
Everything in this gingerbread house is edible!
Modern Canadian Holiday Cottage Snober Khan & Satesh Lakhan
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Materials include gingerbread, icing, food colouring, icing sugar, Pocky, wafers, bunny grahams, Twizzlers, sugar cookies, candy, gummies, and Lifesavers.
Villa Villekulla Herr Nilsson – Leena Sinha & Jutta Brendemuhl
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About this Initiative
The Toronto Society of Architects’ Gingerbread City is a unique creative showcase and community building event bringing together architects and gingerbread lovers alike for a little fun and innovative city building all while supporting a good cause. This year’s creations come from across the GTA and have been brought together into a one-of-a-kind virtual exhibition that can be explored from the comfort of your home.
This event builds upon the local Annual East End Architects Gingerbread Competition, an event organized by MOSS SUND Architects started in 2017 to bring neighbouring studios together in support of a local charity.
Make a Donation: Toronto’s COVID-19 Relief & Recovery
Cities, even those made of gingerbread, are stronger when we all look after each other. The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all of us, but not equally. Many of our city’s most vulnerable groups and communities have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.
This year, if you are able, we would like to encourage all our Gingerbread City visitors to make a donation the City of Toronto’s COVID-19 Relief and Recovery Fund. Funds donated to the City of Toronto’s COVID-19 response will directly contribute to the delivery of vital, community-focused services, both now and during recovery. From food support for the most vulnerable and personal protective equipment for frontline staff to much needed supplies and services for shelters during rapid rehousing, designating your gift allows the City to direct your donation to the highest priority need during this evolving situation.
**Please note that some of the required fields on this form (Where to Give and Program) have already been filled to ensure that funds go directly to the COVID-19 Relief and Recovery Fund
