Guest Post by MGLM’s Gingerbread Starchitect Mallory Mecham
Dec. 24, 2013
December is a time of year filled with holiday traditions, from the religious to the secular to the…architectural?
In my family, gingerbread is a tradition we take very seriously. Each year on Thanksgiving, we’d break out the bottles of molasses and bags of powdered sugar and whip up several batches of gingerbread and royal icing. We’d make a village that included four small, basic gabled-roof houses and one large church, complete with a steeple and stained glass window.
Over the years, my interest in architecture grew, and our villages grew more and more elaborate.
We diversified our patterns, added dormers and chimneys, and got more creative in the styles of the houses.
It seemed a natural progression to apply this family tradition to the work we’re doing in the office. This year I made a quarter-scale model of an Arts & Crafts house that the office had designed for a competition.
It has a lot of great architectural elements that presented some interesting challenges for the gingerbread/icing construction method – bay windows, columns, engaged dormers, a cantilevered wing with arches and brackets – but as in full-scale architecture, it was these details that really made the gingerbread house special. The following are some photos of the process:
And some photos of it all coming together.
As you can see, it has its similarities to actual construction! Foundations, walls, then the roof.
Despite a few mishaps – broken walls, misshapen edges, and a near collapse – the house came together.
While it may not stand the test of time (it is gingerbread, after all), it brought some holiday cheer to the office and some novelty to a time-honored tradition.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all from MGLM Architects!
