AL_A at the Great Architectural Bake Off

With a cake of Newton's Cenotaph by Etienne-Louis Boullée

June 16 2017

Our small but ambitious team were asked to produce an architectural creation that explored the London Festival of Architecture’s theme of ‘Memory’.

‘Can a building be a memory?’

This question led the team to consider a series of unbuilt buildings and structures. We baked Newton’s Cenotaph, designed by Etienne-Louis Boullée in 1790.

The original design consisted of a 500 ft diameter sphere embedded within a three-tiered cylindrical base, giving the impression of a buried volume. For AL_A’s design, the section was captured as a chocolate sponge sphere, complete with white chocolate chunks representing the interior constellation, and a tiered vanilla sponge for the base. A smooth layer of icing and mint coconut chocolate trees completed the exterior and offered a variety of edible textures for the judges’ taste test.

Tamsie Thompson (Director of London Festival of Architecture), Alice Rawsthorn (New York Times Design Critic), Rose Carrarini (founder of the critically acclaimed Rose Bakery), Harriet Thorpe (Architectural Journalist at Wallpaper*) and Danila Puga (Architecture Curator at the Barbican) were the judging panel.

The London Festival of Architecture is Europe’s biggest annual architecture festival, and runs until 30 June 2017 with hundreds of events exploring ‘memory’. The festival celebrates London as a global architectural hub and promotes positive change to its public realm.

Image credits: WATG

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