Williams is a principal at David M. Schwarz Architects, home to Gingertown. First created six years ago, Gingertown is an entire town made out of gingerbread and designed and constructed by architects and others in the building industry. The town is dismantled after one week and given to Washington-area charities, along with a check. How did this project start? We are a homegrown D.C. firm in Mount Pleasant, but over the years we’ve become more national-based with a few projects based in the D.C. area. We realized that in looking for local employees, nobody realized we were here. We were sort of recognized as the most famous architecture firm nobody’s ever heard of. This sort of came out of brainstorming about how to increase our local visibility.
So how long does it take to build? The way it works is our office designs a master plan; some sites have a specific design, some are generic lots. They are given away on a first-come, first-served basis; people reserve lots. Usually the night after Thanksgiving everybody comes together [our office already builds the infrastructure] and in about two-and-a-half hours everybody builds Gingertown.
What’s been your favorite theme or lot? All the punsters in our office come out with naming the roads. When we did the Washington, D.C., theme we had things like Rocky Road Island Avenue; last year with the North Pole theme we had the Rudolph International Airport and the Bridge to Nowhere at the other end.
Where do you donate the town? At end of the week it gets carved up in blocks and we deliver the buildings to seven charitable organizations in the D.C. area. At the young end we do Children’s Hospital and at the old end of the spectrum we do Washington Home and Hospice. … Three years ago we began collecting donations and matching it so we gave about … $2,000 per charity this year.
– Liz Farmer
— Liz Farmer
