(Image courtesy of Wikipedia)

While gingerbread houses are not intended to be used by humans for anything besides consumption, I would argue that they do count as architecture. They still must follow the Vitruvian principles of Venustas, Firmitas, and Utilitas, though the last one is not quite as important. Gingerbread houses exist primarily as a form of beauty. They follow a brutalist style, as the building materials used for structure are very much out in the open, except in some of the larger ginger bread houses which may use hidden toothpicks to hold pieces together. The material used to cement the pieces of gingerbread together is frosting, which is not only visible but often ornate. However, it diverges from brutalism in that candy is used solely for decorative purposes.