Last week I blogged about tiny homes — and this week, the homes are even tinier! Yes, we’re talking gingerbread houses — and very eco-friendly ones at that!

Take, for example, the Earthship Lollipop** above. Following in the eco-steps of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)** certification for human-sized homes, Earthship Lollipop’s LEAD (Leadership in Edible Architectural Design) platinum certified! Eco-features include rammed-icing walls, organic (sugar glass) solar panels, and a “bio-digestible” windmill.

The Earthship Lollipop’s just one of the many gingerbread designs entered into Creative Room’s Gingerbread Competition + Charity Auction 2009** (via The Green Life).** 11 design teams entered their edible designs, to be displayed at the Museum of Vancouver, auctioned off to benefit Architecture for Humanity, and judged by a panel of experts.

Those events ended Dec. 10, but the photos of gingerbread houses are still up for you to ogle — and perhaps inspire you to create your own gingerbread living space. The lilliputian dwellings aren’t all single family homes. In fact, the Ginger Tower 062,** made of “reclaimed Christmas records with inserted pre-fabricated Gingerbread Cookies,” directly addresses “the state of suburban sprawl in the Gingerbread housing market.” To increase “Gingerbread Density,” the tower has many prefab cookie-units that can be easily consumed and replaced, Pez-dispenser-style.

Creative Room actually isn’t the first group to host a gingerbread house contest with green aspirations. Back in 2007, Terry, a sustainability project in Vancouver, held a Bake For A Change sustainable gingerbread house contest.** I actually tried entering this competition, and though my sad little gingerbread duplex (above) did not win, I had a lot of fun making the thing!

Want to make your own gingerbread abode? Get some more inspiration — plus a good icing recipe — by reading Roz Cummins’ post in Grist.** She goes through her step by step process — all five days of them!

And for a simple pattern for making a pre-fab, eco-friendly gingerbread house, just download the PDF for a gingerLotus (above) from eco-architect Michelle Kaufmann’s blog** — and start baking and making.

Top photo via creativeroom.ca; middle photo by Siel; bottom photo via michellekaufmann.com

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