⚫ SEND A PHOTO OF YOUR CONTRIBUTION TO competitor@wcugh.org BEFORE Dec 16th 19.00 UTC.
⚫ OR BRING YOUR PHYSICAL CONTRIBUTION TO THE EXHIBITION AT KÄLLARBYN, STORA NYGATAN 31, STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN, FROM DEC 14th TO DEC 16th BETWEEN 12am AND 8pm (LOCAL TIME).
⚫ THE JURY WILL RELEASE THE ELECTED WINNER DEC 18th at 11am UTC.
⚫ THE COMPETITORS WILL BE EXHIBITED ON THIS SITE AND THE IRL EXHIBITION AT KÄLLARBYN, STORA NYGATAN 31, STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN 12am TO 8pm UNTIL DEC 23rd. (keep in mind there are few competitors to exhibit 2021, see below)
The rules are: 1) Made of traditional gingerbread house materials, i.e. gingerbread doe, sugar glue and icing. 2) Is edible. 3) It’s not allowed to send someone elses gingerbread house, or photo of it, as a competitor, without the creator’s approaval and concent. It’s also not allowed to convince a child to participate if she/he tried to make a beautiful gingerbread house - use empathic common sense! 4) Photo retouch equals disqualification.
No, by the International Ugliest Gingerbread House Olympics Committee.
Yeah, what is beautiful and what is ugly? That's up to the competitors and the jury to decide.
The world champion will be selected directly. No semifinals. However silver and bronze medalists will be announced.
A selection of architects, pastry cooks, artists, and people with other relevant skills.
No, just the glory of being a world champion.
Aren't you tired of "most beautiful or best" competitions?
Technical rules are: 1) Made of traditional gingerbread house materials, i.e. gingerbread doe, sugar glue and icing. 2) Is edible.
Size is up to the competitors, however if the competing house is delivered physically to the exhibition space at Källarbyn in Stockholm, it either has to be no wider than 1200mm (entrance door), or else be assembled on location. Participants are welcome to make final assembly or adjustments at the exhibition. No oven is available or can be used at the exhibition though.
WCUGH acknowledge any participant from planet Earth. There's no maximum number of participants from any given country. No prior national selection is required. Just enter your contribution for contest.
Jury motivation:
What at first sight seems
like a rendition of a pooping dog, after closer inspection turns out to
be a possible architectural construct. As such, the astatic framework
bestows the spectator with the sensation of pointlessness, lack of
joyous creativity and resistance of obliging to the harmony of the
golden circle. As a house, the structure's interior scarcity, which
offer neither shelter nor warmth or togetherness for its inhabitants, is
only further elucidated by its equivocal effort to adorn its bird's eye
exterior, where the hesitant stripe of pink sugar glacé, combined with a
mysterious shiny blob - arguable pickled herring - only serves to
exemplify superficial glossiness attempts to cover misery, further
emphasized by the desert-like surrounding wasteland.
It might not be too daring to interpret this to be a pavilion, or a shed at very least. As such, it is possible to imagine a prime minister or a member of the royal family, for example, giving a speech under the tilted roof, constantly bombarded by a punishing December rain. In this scenario, the audience would quite naturally be placed in the rain, which would successfully underline the overall depressive mood of the scene. The manifestation of controlled mind activity - ego - is a successful way of achieving ugliness. Well done! A successfully ugly, worthy champion by unanimous decision.
Jury comment:
While chaos can at first glance appear disturbing, and in the eye of some beholders, thus be interpreted as ugly, it inherits some natural qualities. Accidentally natural beauty might have distorted this object.
In terms of "house", what is seen here could be interpreted as a destroyed building, once located in a glittering silver landscape. Interpreted as such; in fact there is no "house" at present, only a ruin that is most likely caused by an explosion or perhaps a natural disaster, and which then inevitable leads the imagination to what once was, or could have been an unparalleled home in beauty. Could the essence behind the expression here possibly be anger of staying indoor at home Covid19-measures?
Either way, when stripped of the supposed back story, symbolism or the creator's intention, this contester simply fails to be ugly per se. Pity, pity.
Unfortunately, or fortunately - however one perceives it, this year's World Cup only had two competitors. If that means 99,9999999746835% of Earths human population don't make gingerbread houses, or only makes beautiful gingerbread houses, or think they do, and whether this promise a bright future or not, or they don't like competitions, prefer other competitions, or simply missed the opportunity to be a world champion, is not up to this jury to evaluate.
Earth's human population
WCUGH World Cup competitors
WCUGH World Cup Winners
Approximate number of Gingerbread doe-making years