This year the House of Dior did a monumental takeover of London department store Harrods. Leaving behind the 44 grand window, the spectacular light display and installations that turned some part of the store into a Hansel & Gretel fantasy (or nightmare, depending from your point of view…), the most notable thing of "The Fabulous World of Dior" celebrations (until 3rd January 2022) remains an exhibition with several tableaux reproducing as gingerbread models Granville (Christian Dior's seaside childhood home in Normandy), La Colle Noire (the designer's chateau on the border of Alpes-Maritime and the Var region) and 30 Avenue Montaigne (Dior's flagship store in Paris).
Besides, on display there are also iconic miniature clothing designs from the house's archive reimagined in gingerbread, including the "Junon" dress and the Lady Dior bag.
Yet, you don't need to be a powerful fashion house to create unique biscuit architectures, as proved by the participants of the "Gingerbread House" competition organised at Stockholm-based ArkDes, Sweden's national centre for architecture and design.
This year the competition moved from a very simple theme - "Around the corner" - and 141 participants interpreted it in very original ways.
Some of the gingerbread models entered in the competition were inspired by minimalist architectures, others were instead incredibly detailed, often decorated in vibrantly coloured icing details.
Among the entries, there are castles and labyrinths; robots and dragons' dens; the royal ship Vasa (that sank 15 minutes into its maiden voyage – certainly she didn't get further than "around the corner"…); an elaborate cat café and Rapunzel's tower; a recreation of the Pacman videogame, a wonderfully ornate version of Skeppsholmen Church, located just around the corner from ArkDes and fairytales books stacked in a pile inviting readers to discover new worlds.
One participant created a dynamic scene, an unusual accident at the corner of Polkagränd and St Lucia, with a reindeer sled that, slipping on the ice, crashed into a convenience store.
The prize of the public went to a colourful recreation of Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking's Villa Villekulla, complete with Pippi and her friends, their clothes perfectly traced with multi-coloured icing.
The first prize for the Architects, Designers and Bakers category went to a tragicomic model featuring a fisherman so concentrated on his catch to be completely unaware that something extremely scary - a waterfall - is lurking just "around the corner".
An elaborate building reminiscent of a grand department store with a long queue of little characters waiting to meet Santa, sitting just around the corner, got instead the "Anyone Else Who Loves Baking" category.
A super colourful sustainable artist's studio with solar cells and a doodle wall where all the people visiting the studio can leave their messages, was the imaginative design that won the children's category.
So, in these last two days of the year, why don't you get inspired by these designs and try creating your own gingerbread winter wonderland? After all, nothing can go wrong with biscuit architecture: if it looks horrible, you can indeed make it quickly disappear by eating it. Nobody will ever know about your architectural failure and there will also be an added bonus - zero material waste.
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