The Gingerbread City has opened its doors in London!

Over 100 leading architects, landscape architects, engineers and designers have come together to create this year’s The Gingerbread City 2022. Five mini-cities in five of the world’s climate zones – Polar, Temperate, Continental, Desert and Tropical – have been created to show what a sustainable future could look like. The cities contain everything you might expect to see in a real-life city including residential houses, train stations, markets and museums to wetlands, farms, parks and gardens. Visitors can also marvel at moving trains, a working cable car and twirling carousels.

Now in its sixth year, The Gingerbread City champions sustainable design ideas and puts an exciting twist on the  traditional gingerbread house. Organised by Museum of Architecture, a charity dedicated to connecting the public with architecture and design in an exciting way, the exhibition aims to inspire important conversations about cities and how we live in them – all through the medium of gingerbread.

Melissa Woolford, founder of Museum of Architecture said: “I am so excited to unveil this year’s Gingerbread City and be able to showcase so many brilliant ideas for how to tackle the challenge of building for different climates. By bringing all these ideas together Museum of Architecture hopes to inspire meaningful conversations around how we can act to help save our planet.”

The exhibition opens to the public on Saturday 3 December in a pop-up venue on Motcomb Street, Belgravia. Tickets from £10 via The Gingerbread City website. Daily gingerbread house-making workshops are available to pre-book. This year, participants get to take home their very own eco-home with wind turbine and solar panels.

Highlights
Liquorice Library (UHA) – in the continental zone, designed using CLT with glulam beams this library has a low carbon diet and contains over 1500 books and 84 visitors
Mille-Feuille Square (PRP) – residential complex designed to adapt to London’s changing temperate climate with vertical gardens, aquaculture pods and green houses
Santa’s Wagon Wheel Workshop (Arup) – Santa’s workshop was once on the ice but now it is surrounded by desert. Reindeers are replaced by camels and Santa is in Speedos!
Glacier Mint Plaza (Chapman Taylor) – landscaped waterfront plaza in the polar zone with ice-skating, saunas, hot tubs and cable car
Cotton Candy College (BDP) – university campus dedicated to achieving a circular economy in the continental zone
Bio-Doughm (Stride Treglown) – a new self-sufficient community in the polar zone
Fish_Do (If_Do) – an arctic harbour powered by renewables
Willy Wonka Wetland (Alexandra Noble Design) – a new eco-system for London, protecting against floods, droughts and pollution
Micelium Splash (Barr Gazetas) lido and reservoir – using mushrooms and mycelium as primary materials, the pond collects, filters and purifies the water
Parfait Palmeraie (Aterre Studio) – eco-community using desert permaculture techniques to recycle water
Meringue Market (Gustafson Porter + Bowman) – sustainable agriculture providing
a fair income for all inhabitants in the tropical zone
Super Tree Gumball Gardens (Zaha Hadid Architects) – tropical vertical gardens
made in collaboration with Brik Chocolate
Liquorice Train Station (AHMM) – solar panels, wind turbines and rain water harvesting in the temperate zone
Treat Tops Nature Reserve (Group 19 x Spark Structures) – look out points in rewilded tropical nature reserve
Museum of Marshmallows (Kevin Kelly Architects) – a tribute to the most unlikely
building material in the temperate zone
Fruit Loop Farm (Outerspace) – harnesses scarce rainfall in the desert zone with a
goal to ‘close the loop’ on waste

Exhibition: The Gingerbread City 2022
Location: 6-7 Motcomb Street, London SW1X 8JU
Dates: Saturday 3 December 2022 until Monday 2 January 2023
Nearest station: Knightsbridge Underground
Tickets: from £10 via thegingerbreadcity.com

This year’s city is based on a masterplan developed by Madeleine Kessler Architecture and Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design.

For the latest news follow the Gingerbread City on Instagram:
@TheGingerbreadCity
Hashtag: #GingerbreadCity2022