Designer Cakes Topped Off Archifest With a Flavourful Flourish
Pastry has never looked as sleek and sexy as these iconic building desserts
Archifest 2017 gave members of the public the opportunity to be in the presence of some of Asia’s most iconic buildings in just one afternoon. Well, the cake versions of the buildings.
Award-winning design firm WATG brought The Great Architectural Bake-Off (GABO) to Singapore for its Asian debut. Held on the last Saturday of Archifest, October 14, it saw eight different teams comprising of some of Singapore’s top designers and architects putting their baking and decorating skills to the test. Each team was asked to explore the theme ‘collaboration’ and create confectionery delights that were tasty replicas of their real-life counterparts.
Throughout the three-hour bake-off, the event hall at the Working Capitol was abuzz with sugary anticipation. With sunshine flooding into the open-concept space from the well-placed skylights, attention was focussed on the centre of the room, where DP Architects placed their finishing touches to their pure-white Esplanade. In another corner, sugar-spun domes were being draped with thin strips of fondant while martini glasses, dressed with purple and green icing, were being set onto the base of CPG’s diorama of Gardens By The Bay.
Other creations included a detailed replica of The Interlace by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) Design Team. Each of the irregularly stacked 'bricks' were black and white kueh lapis (layered cake) blocks, while local snacks such as Pocky, Want Want biscuits and blue agar agar was used to create the trees, swimming pools and other elements of the condominium’s surrounding landscape.
P + A put together a charming traditional shophouse, complete with a cut section of the interiors. The team painstakingly pieced together the red fondant roof tiles, painted detailing into the rooms and even added a miniature version of their office cat in the courtyard.
Thrown into the mix was Gensler’s clever, but wobbly Shanghai Tower. It was built by placing sections of the tower on top of each other, each portion separated by a plastic partition and made of coconut cake surrounded by Jell-O for that glassy appearance.
The audience was free to mill about the room, lend support and simply watch the baking (or was it architectural?) magic in progress. The judges started their walkabout with 30 minutes left on the clock. Comprising of journalists, culinary maestros and several architecture heavyweights, they observed how the teams worked together and deliberated before moving onto the taste test of the session.
Eventually the results came to pass, and the winners were clear. DP Architects' Esplanade masterpiece took home first place. It could have been the all-white aesthetics or how the team came together to place miniature little fondant spikes on each dome and even little fondant cars by the side of the 'road'. Or it could have been that one dome of the cake was Milo Dinosaur flavoured and the other durian.
CPG took home the prize for tastiest building with their edible interpretation of Gardens By The Bay.
WATG came in second place with their representation of “The Boat”, the Yanlord Crowne Plaza Resort.