Thursday, July 5, 2007

Biscuit City








Biscuit City being built at Selfridges in London. On the Biscuit City according to the builders there was no real plan. Chinese Artist Song Dong designed a few of the big buildings, but most of it was down to the builders to make up as they went along. Biscuits and bright jelly bean type sweets have been used in the construction, but wafers seem to be the main building blocks of choice. Anything else was mainly just for decoration. McVities, one of the sponsers, had a fair range out on show including Gingernuts, Shortcakes, Digestives, Fruit shortcakes, Pink Wafers, Custard Creams and the often hard to find Crawfords Fig Roll. Many of the wafers were made by Loacker, an Italian company who seem to specialise in them. These seemed to have been chosen for their length as much as anything, about twice that of a pink wafer, finding their way into various bridges and arches. The Pink wafers had been used sparingly, probably they're too garish even for use as building blocks.
Ryvita crispbreads got to join in the fun, though mostly to be used as a utiliterian floor, rather than lofty skyscrapers. I was a bit miffed that there weren't any Jaffa Cakes, but maybe that's because they're a cake, and this was a biscuit thing. And they're a bit rounded on top, so probably tricky to build with. Despite it being a Chinese design I didn't spot any Chinese biscuits. Perhaps they were worried they would scare people away. I had a quick chat with one of the builders. She assured me that despite working for days on the job she had not been put off biscuits, and when the job was over she would continue to eat them. Although not too many as that would make you sick. Well quite. I would also like to reassure anyone who is thinking of going that all the biscuit builders were wearing gloves, but not hard hats or flourescent jackets.

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