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Gingerbread City 2022

2023 2022 2021 2020 Resources

The Toronto Society of Architects’ Gingerbread City is a fantastical metropolis where you can eat the walls and taste the lamp posts. Our showcase is as diverse as our city, with the only rule being that all elements must be edible. This year’s city is filled with unique creations built by architects, bakers and clever place makers reflective of some of the top architectural topics of 2022, from cheeky references to heritage retention to exemplary net zero gingerbread retrofits.

New to this year is Kids’ Main Street, a sugar dusted, mixed-used virtual streetscape where you will find everything you need – from bowties to art supplies to all your dragon caring essentials.

Ready to explore? Click on the images below to take a closer look at these edible creations, see additional content including pictures, animations, and descriptions, and learn more about their design.

Want to see some of these creations in person? We have once again partnered with The Maker Bean Café where a selection of these edible creations are on display through to January 11, 2023.


Call for 2023 Entries
Support this Program

In-Person Exhibit

The Maker Bean Café
 1052 Bloor St W, Toronto

December 14, 2022 – January 11, 2023
 Mon-Sat 8:30 AM – 6:00 PM,
Sun 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM

2022 Creations

The Gooderham Building

Calum Tsang

This is a model of the Gooderham Building in downtown Toronto. Just seemed like an iconic building to try and model using a new medium for me. A hilarious process using advanced design techniques using the volumetric massing models from the City of Toronto and AutoDesk Fusion360 were used to generate custom 3D printed tools...but really in the end it was just mostly using a knife, rolling pin and a plastic ruler which, of course, melted onto the bottom of a baking sheet.
Materials: Gingerbread, icing. There's a cone of foil used as a form for the peak.
Umbra Concept Store

Joël León Danis

My submission for this year’s TSA Gingerbread City is an edible recreation of the Umbra Concept Store in downtown Toronto, designed by Kohn Shnier Architects with Figure3 (interior design)! It is a building I often talk about during our tours and one of my favourite pops of colour in the city. I’ve always thought its particularly clever that this is a renovation to an existing structure and an excellent example that eye-catching, great architecture can come in all sizes and colours.
Materials: Gingerbread, isomalt, royal icing and a lot of patience.
York Square

Michelle Chan

York Square was one of those buildings that formed the fabric of Toronto. Its distinctive round windows were a fixture on Avenue Road in Yorkville for decades. Yet it was a ground-breaking project when it was completed in 1968 – the use of red brick, the adaptive reuse of existing buildings, the low-rise courtyard form – all things that seem perfectly normal today, were exciting and different. The complex was demolished in spring this year. Jack Diamond, one of its influential architects, died in late fall. Toronto will dearly miss them both.
Materials: Gingerbread, chocolate gingerbread, sugar cookie, royal icing, sanding sugar, silver dragées
Gingerbread Façade Retention

Kurt Kraler

A gingerbread city would not be complete without the now ubiquitous heritage facade retention. Cities are in a state of constantly flux, with buildings in various stages of construction, maintenance, decay, and restoration. Although the sign on this delectable building states that it was created in 2022, it is now fresh for redevelopment!
Materials: Gingerbread, royal icing, red liquorice Nibs, Twizzlers, gum drops, candy cane, chocolate wafer rolls
Gingerbread Retrofit

MOSS SUND Architects and Homes to Zero

This gingerbread home was in poor repair - it was drafty and in urgent need of renovation. After carefully planning a Net Zero/ Low Carbon retrofit, we got to work. The existing structure was wrapped in wafer insulation and finished with sugar strip cladding. Internally, we pretzel framed the walls, insulated them with cotton candy and then covered all walls with a fruit roll up membrane to ensure the building is airtight. Juicy fruit drywall completes the interior. Solar panels on the south-facing roof generate electricity for the home, and the jelly Air Source Heat Pump replaced the existing gas furnace. The triple paned windows are sadly on back order, but once they’re installed, this home will be Net Zero and future ready!
Materials: Gingerbread, Wafer cookies, Pretzels, Cotton Candy, Fruit roll-ups, Juicy fruit gum, Sugar strip candy, Fruit gummies, Halls cough drops, Sprinkles, Royal icing
Gingerbread Eiffel Tower

Izen Architecture

This 30” gingerbread Eiffel Tower honours one of the most recognised and famous architectural monuments in the world, one that embodies the romance and warmth of the holiday season. In order to fabricate this edible masterpiece, we sectioned the Eiffel tower into three portions – top, centre and bottom. Each section has five gingerbread pieces, which were templated prior to baking and left to harden over a 24-hour time period before being assembled. We assembled the structure one section at a time, letting each one dry before adding on more pieces. The overall process took 10 hours over 3 days to finalize.
Mostly gingerbread and icing.
Home for the Holidays

Sandra F. Smith Architects

Coming together to create a community during this festive time of year despite hardship
Materials: Gingerbread, wafer paper, Shredded coconut, Crackers, Pretzels, Royal Icing, Hard Candy, Red Licorice, Green Gummies, Powder and Paste Food Colour, White Chocolate trees and Assorted candies
Roncesvalles United Gingerbread Church

Barb McLean

Nostalgia. Celebrating local heritage architecture in Roncesvalles Village. Building was originally Erskine United Church designed by George, Moorhouse & King Architects, 1928. Made also for a donation to the Roncesvalles United Church Christmas bake sale. I made gingerbread houses every year when I was in high school. So for this gingerbread church, I pulled out the saved recipe from a 1978? Toronto Star article by Anne Lindsay that I used way back then.
Materials: Gingerbread, edible 'glue, royal Icing, lemon drops hard candy (stained glass windows), sprinkles, Ice cream cone ( base for christmas tree), coloured party candles (rainbow stairs)
Beinecake Library

Thomas Guignard

In this universe, Gordon Bunshaft pursued his hitherto unknown passion for baking and became a confectioner at Sweet Orange Meringue bakery (SOM) in Chicago. In 1963, he imagined a box of translucent Vemont tuile panels to store Yale University’s rare candies collection. The “Beinecake Library”, as the creation is known, is mirrored in the sunken courtyard in which is a sculpture by Isamu Noguchi: The Garden (Icing pyramid, Life Saver and Jolly Rancher). It is rumoured that the pyramid was initially intended to be a Toblerone triangle, but a candy stock mismanagement event led the creator to hastily improvise an alternative.
Materials: Gingerbread, tuile, royal icing, red Life Saver, green Jolly Rancher, powdered sugar

Kids’ Main Street

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What happens when kids are in charge of designing the city’s main thoroughfare? You get a lot of colour, creativity, and fun!

As part of this year’s TSA Gingerbread City we asked kids to help us design Main Street façades (architect speak for the front of a building), as part of two in-person workshops held at the Centre for Social Innovation. The delicious results are captured in the scrolling streetscape above. Click on the arrows at the bottom right of the image to go full screen and see all the wonderful detail done by these gingerbread architects! 

A special shout out to our amazing gingerbread architects: Ada, Charlotte & Ethan, Nikita, Max, Max, River, Pamela, William, Alina, Sabina, John, Juliana, Victoria, Charlotte, Maxim, Luna, Hazel, Otis, Teodoro, Frankie, Dena, Maple, Ethan, Hannah, Netta, Pendar, Eva, Sebastiano, Oscar.


In-Person Exhibit Hosted By

Kids’ Main Street Supported By