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Buildings Got Baked at New York's Great Architectural Bake-Off

After success in London, the Great Architectural Bake-Off got a New York edition.
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.

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Seven firms entered the madness this past Tuesday at Chelsea’s Gallery 151, cooking up seven different baked buildings. WATG and Wimberly Interiors went with the New Museum, Grade New York with Philip Johnson’s Glass House, and Studios Architecture chose the late Zaha Hadid’s Heydar Aliyev Center. Woods Bagot chose the Sydney Opera House, Jeffrey Beers International went with the New York Philharmonic, and Bespoke with Lincoln Center (which coincidentally includes the Philharmonic building). Rounding off the competition was MADE with a rendition of IKEA Red Hook.

MADE’s Ikea Red Hook

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

Woods Bagot’s Sydney Opera House

Once 5:30 arrived, the judges descended like vultures upon the firms, placing their final touches on their baked goods. Representing the architectural and design portion of the competition were Benjamin Prosky, the Executive Director of the American Institute of Architects New York; Stacy Shoemaker, the Editor-in-Chief of Hospitality Design; and David Graver, the Senior Editor of Cool Hunting. Baking was marked by a lone but important judge: Michael Laiskonis, the Creative Director of New York City’s acclaimed Institute of Culinary Education.

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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Honorable Mention: Phillip Johnson’s Glass House

The enthusiasm was beyond palpable. Events like these allow for a break from the hectic work schedules of architectural firms, while still building team synergy and allowing for a playful interaction with the rest of their field at large. If this was a test run to see how the New York architecture scene would respond to a baking competition, then there’s no doubt another edition of The Great Architectural Bake-Off New York will be coming soon.

Click here to learn more about the Great Architectural Bake-Off.

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