Now in its third year, The Museum of Architectures ‘The Gingerbread City’ is an annual event bringing together architects, designers and engineers to create a city made entirely from gingerbread. Each year, key UK based architectural practices respond to the master plan by designing buildings, parks and public spaces and baking them out of gingerbread.
The exhibition is the Museum of Architectures annual fundraising project that supports its programming and activities throughout the year. Gingerbread City aims to bring together the public through a festive architectural display designed specifically for the Christmas period.
This year’s Gingerbread City focuses on the theme ‘Imagining the Future City’, based on a masterplan designed by Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design. Over sixty structures make up the city of 2018, which acts as the epitome for futuristic cities which are sustainable, innovative and socially responsible. The fully-lit construction includes houses, office blocks, landmarks and bridges, as well as a cinema, library, city farm, sports stadium and botanical gardens.
Award winning architectural lighting design practice, Illuminationworks, designed the lighting scheme for Gingerbread City, calling upon Architainment Lighting, as supplier of the year, to supply, install and commission the lighting for the city. Architainment provided a complete linear LED solution for the building lighting, using LED Linear’s VarioLED Flex Hydra. With only 2W per light strip and high colour rendering the vibrant light brings the miniature buildings to life with low level aisle lighting, dimmed to perfection with EldoLED drivers.
Nic Tolkien, Managing Director, Architainment Lighting said ‘It is an honour to collaborate with The Museum of Architecture, the architects and Illuminationworks for this year’s Gingerbread City. Events such as these are pivotal for the architectural community and to be able to support the exhibition, by offering a comprehensive lighting solution, and designated onsite technical support has been our pleasure’.
‘The city created for 2018 really embraces how our future cities could look, and the lighting complements this well. It really is a gingerbread masterpiece, and I would encourage everyone to head to the V and A to see it for themselves and get in the festive spirit!’.
Gingerbread City is on exhibition at the V and A Museum, London from 8th December 2018 – 6th January 2019. To purchase tickets, visit – https://www.thegingerbreadcity.com/visit-gingerbread-city.html .
