From Prairie School and Mid-Century Modernist to ContemporaryEco-Friendly?mini-homes with cutting edge green (and red) technology, this is (chocolate, cookie and candy) innovation of the sweetest variety. Hardwood gingerbread floors, straight lines of icing, structural graham-cracker concrete, marshmallow mortar and relatively minimalist decorating strategies make you almost want to live in (rather than eat) one of these. Almost.
 

There is a long, rich (and tasty) history behind making gingerbread homes for the holidays, from patterns and kits bought in stores to recipes and ideas handed down within families. Some of these alternative do-it-yourself version buck tradition and border on ultra-modern while others are curious hybrids – not entirely conventional nor truly contemporary.

With more and more people – from creative individuals to entire architecture firms – reinventing this seasonal holiday classic, one has to wonder: how would one go about getting LEED sustainability certification for a miniature edible eco-house? Might want to skip solar or wind power as well, at least until structural issues of melting and toppling are fully resolved.

Gingerbread homes are just so 20th Century, don’t you think? Here are a few quirky variants on this timeless classic for the more adventurous cook-turned-constructor.

From Instrucables user KitchenTableScraps, with both a pastry chef and architecture background, comes a more urban solution inspired by Brooklyn – the gingerbread townhouse, technically edible but too beautiful to destroy.

DomesticEngineer takes a similarly hybrid approach, combining an unusual type of domicile- the igloo – with the appropriately winter-season, gingerbread-building activity.

Finally, from TringsThings there is a more fanciful gingerbread castle fusing elements of edible construction with fairy-tale architecture. A slightly easier and less-picky project, too, for kids or those without model-building educations from architecture schools.