Moving away from the bread-and-butter approach, Foster + Partners is cooking up a storm at this year’s Gingerbread City exhibit at the V&A in London, organised by the Museum of Architecture.
Entitled Exploration Pavilion, the project explores the mouth-watering possibilities of building with an unusual material – gingerbread. Combining emergent robotic technologies with traditional baking and handcrafting techniques, the practice has constructed an exciting and complex-shaped pavilion building.
Using innovative methods and technologies used in real-world projects, the Exploration Pavilion illustrates the interface between technology and construction. The design team, consisting of architects, programmers and modelmakers, fashioned laser-cut gingerbread blocks to form the basis of the structure. They then built a script that transformed a digital 3D-model of the building into robot language, allowing a robot arm to build the gingerbread house with great precision. The playful project makes some of the complex technology used on building projects accessible to everyone.
A spokesperson from Foster + Partners said, “The idea was to not put all our eggs in one basket, so we took a completely fresh approach to the project. And while this project was certainly not a piece of cake, real-life building projects and designing with gingerbread use the same principles – they really aren’t chalk and cheese! However, we strode to strike a balance between innovation and tradition, and hopefully we haven’t over-egged the pudding.”
The pavilion will be on display at the V&A Museum in London from 8 December 2018 - 6 January 2019. There are several gingerbread house-making workshops taking place throughout the duration of the exhibition.
For tickets and more information: www.thegingerbreadcity.com
