Winning Cake: Zaha Hadid’s Heydar Aliyev Center. All photos by the author
Contrary to what you might think, there are more than a few similarities between architecture and baking: both follow a set of instructions to produce a final product and both are meticulous constructions that can either marvel or massively disappoint. For the most part, the overlap ends there, but that didn’t stop architecture firm WATG and Wimberly Interiors from hosting their Great Architectural Bake-Off New York, a competition between architecture and design firms based in New York to see who could produce the cake that most resembles an architectural structure.
From 3 PM until 5:30 PM sharp, the teams from each firm hustled to produce their constructions. In an appropriately architectural fashion, each had produced a blueprint-esque layout breaking down each section, demonstrating what the cake would look like when completed, and denoting the materials planned to be used for each part. Baking, however, is different than building construction, allowing for a certain amount of clever last-minute improvisation, like a lake of blue JELL-O surrounding Woods Bagots' rendition of the Sydney Opera House, and Studios Architecture opting to create a miniature doll of Zaha Hadid out of leftover baking supplies.
WATG and Wimberly Interiors’ New Museum
In an effort to make the cakes more like their parent buildings, some teams incorporated non-edible components to add touches of unexpected brilliance. WATG and Wimberly Interiors included shining LEDs to mimic the New Museum’s exterior lights. MADE’s IKEA included a real IKEA children’s play mat, toy cars, and LEGO pedestrians to mimic the hustle and bustle of the giant store. Grade New York’s Glass House included miniature versions of the lights that shine in the house at night as well as non-edible stick ‘tree trunks’ to accompany the highly elegant (and edible) foliage of their trees.
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Bespoke’s Lincoln Center
Jeffrey Beers International’s New York Philharmonic
The judges inspecting Studios Architecture’s Heydar Aiyev Center
The lighthearted, but fastidious judges approached each firm’s workspace, sampling the cakes and questioning the groups on the architectural backgrounds of the buildings they chose to represent. The winning criteria wasn’t as simple as the finding the coolest looking one, or the cake that most resembled the building it was modeled after—for close to 30 minutes, the four judges evaluated each team’s cake for creative use of baking materials, the perceived degree of difficulty behind their creation, how realistic the cake-buildings were, and of course, how good they tasted. They then huddled together for another tense 10 minutes to decide the winner.
Honorable Mention: GRADE
Winners: Studios Architecture
The judges and the winning team behind Studios Architecture
Bending the rigidity of the competition's rules, which only referenced the awarding of a single winner, the judges announced that an honorable mention would be going out to Grade New York’s rendition of the Glass House, a cake with more nuanced detail due to its smaller scale than the others, and its incorporation of the surrounding land. Many were certain it would take first prize. That honor, however, was reserved for a different building. Due to their excellent prowess in executing the building’s undulated lines in cake form, as well as the clever addition of the Zaha Hadid cake doll, the Heydar Aliyev Center by Studios Architecture ended up literally taking the cake, as well as a plaque commemorating them as victors of New York’s first Great Architectural Bake-Off.
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