"Among the senses engaged in experiencing architecture, taste remains the least active. Edible architectural structures seem only to exist in fiction, in stories such as The Gingerbread House, a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812. The protagonists, Hansel and Gretel, are a young brother and sister cast away from home. Wandering alone through the forest, the two children discover a house made of cake and confectionery. Tempted by the luscious structure, the hungry siblings start to bite into its sugar windowpanes and gingerbread roof, not yet knowing this architectural treat is a trap set by a witch. In Grimms’ story, architecture appears as an object of immediate, bodily experience. Doors, roof, walls and other structural elements function as sources of sensual pleasure, as they are “nibbled,” “tasted,” and “enjoyed with.”1 The tale of Hansel and Gretel is still one of the most powerful stories on the sensual perception of architecture, yet it remains different from our experience of buildings. First, the gingerbread house lacks the constraints of “real” architecture, which is expected to provide shelter and possess the quality of permanence. Second, its sensuous dimension remains in strong contrast with the dominant discourse of architecture."
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