Submission deadline December 1, 2026, 11:59pm
Amsterdam
Netherlands
To coincide with the 2026 festive season, Hartwig Art Foundation is pleased to announce its second open call for proposals for the Gingerbread Competition, taking place at Hartwig Proxy, the testing ground of the future Hartwig Museum in Amsterdam. We welcome international submissions from artists, architects, designers, students, and gingerbread enthusiasts, from October 21 until December 1, 2026.
What comes next?
In 2026, we invite you to propose the next condition.
What happens after a building has been built? After occupation, maintenance, inheritance, abandonment? What happens when a structure gets new users, with a different behaviour?
Gingerbread is a material with an unusual relationship to time. It is structural and edible; decorative and functional; familiar and strange. It can be built, broken, shared, preserved or eaten.
Prize Gingerbread Competition 2026
The winning proposal will be developed and constructed in 2027 at Hartwig Proxy in a scale model defined in close consultation with the Hartwig curatorial and production team.
An international jury of specialists, led by Hartwig's Director Beatrix Ruf, will select the winner of this competition, to be announced soon. A people's choice prize will also be awarded based on live voting at Hartwig Proxy on the evening of 10 December 2026.
Both winners will receive a trophy, a festive cake delivered to their home, and a hard hat tour of the future Hartwig Museum.
Each proposal's key characteristics and features must be presented on an A3 sheet of paper, which will be displayed publicly from 10–13 December 2026 at Hartwig Proxy. Supplementary materials may be submitted, but may not be fully considered.
Please send your submission via this link before 1 December 2026, 23:59 CET.
Timeline
October 21, 2026: Applications open
December 1, 2026: Applications close, 23:59 CET
December 10, 2026, 19:00: Award ceremony. Winners announced
December 10–13, 2026: Submissions displayed at Hartwig Proxy
Competition rules
–The design must be reproducible and will be represented in the space as a single A3 sheet—this is how it will be displayed in public.
–One submission per participant. Collaborative proposals are permitted, but entrants must use their artist/legal name.
–Gingerbread must be an integral component in your proposal, but may be freely combined with indications of other materials.
–The proposal must be submitted as a digital file via the submission form. We accept the following formats: PDF, JPG, or PNG (maximum file size 10MB).
–Supplementary materials may be submitted, but will not necessarily be considered unless the jury requests further information. No submitted materials will be returned. Incomplete submissions will not be considered.
We are happy to respond to enquiries via proxy@hartwigartfoundation.nl.
The 2025 winners
In 2025, a jury of Matthew Barney, Kerstin Brätsch, and Touria Meliani selected Tom Biddulph's The Tyranny of Needs and ADRA Studio's Gingerbread Bird's House as the winning proposals. Both proposals are currently in production and will be on display at Hartwig Proxy during the 2026 festive season.
Tom Biddulph's proposal took the corrugated metal shack—a ubiquitous, functional and ostensibly temporary form of architecture—and recast it in gingerbread. The resulting structure can be repaired, reassembled, or devoured. Its lifespan is determined by a simple question: which need is more pressing, food or shelter?
ADRA Studio's Gingerbread Bird’s House prepares itself for another set of inhabitants. Birds become both consumers and agents of its transformation, pecking through the gingerbread shingles and turning decoration into openings. Designed as a shelter for smaller birds, their proposal is ultimately realised at the scale of a bird feeder.
About Hartwig Proxy
Hartwig Proxy is a testing ground, and is imagined as a meeting place for the neighbourhood and the city in the years before the Hartwig Museum opens. Proxy is a space for exchange and experimentation, a space to visit, engage in discussion with us, spend time, and meet people in open formats of all kinds.
