Top Ten Architects Upgrade the Gingerbread House for Charity

Vancouver Special, in collaboration with Creative Room, is pleased to announce the first annual Gingerbread Competition and Charity Auction.

Hidden behind a thin veneer of jujubes and smarties, the ubiquitous form of the gingerbread house has stood unchallenged for too long! The malignant plague of cookie-cutter housing, which fouls suburbia cannot be invited into our homes this holiday season. No longer representative of our modern lives, held in place by no more than icing and a repressing layer of nostalgia, the conventional gingerbread house must make way for the gingerbread house of today!

As a Holiday Season homage to the mid-century Art+Architecture Magazine’s Case Study House Program, Creative Room and Vancouver Special are challenging ten of Vancouver’s best architects and designers to rethink the gingerbread house in a form more fitting for our modern life: to reinterpret the gingerbread house within a modern context. 

The gingerbread house reinventions are to be judged by a celebrity panel based on the following criteria: originality, material expression, edible content, craftsmanship, consideration of landscape, use of lighting, and of course, whimsey. Entries will be auctioned off such that they may grace the living rooms of a select few Vancouver homes this holiday season. All proceeds from this event will be donated to Pivot Legal Society.

The Auction begins November 19th, 2008. The Gala opening and closing auction is November 25th from 7-10 at Vancouver Special, 3612 Main Street.

THE JURY PANEL INCLUDES:

•  Patricia Patkau - Principal of Patkau Architects, UBC Professor of Architecture

•  Ken Lum - Conceptual Artist and Theorist

•  Christina Ritchie - Curator and Director of the Contemporary Art Gallery

PARTICIPANTS INCLUDE:

Over 28 of Vancouver’s most talented architects and designers were invited to make a submission to the design competition and there was an outstanding response. Unfortunately, the submissions were narrowed down to 10 teams of Vancouver’s leading architects and designers (based on a first come, first served basis) and they are as follow:

•  Amazing Alphabet People’s Coalition             

•  Battersby Howat                    

•  UBC SALA                       

•  Stantec with Kreative Artisan Bakery           

•  Bruce Carscadden Architect Inc.            

•  D’arcy Jones Design

•  Bricault Design

•  Shape Architecture Inc.

•  Measured.Architecture.Inc.

•  Busby Perkins and Will

Come out and judge for yourselves!