Vytautas the Great War Museum: the Cake. Photograph: M. Vizbaras, 2020.

During the process of making a video film on Kaunas Modernism, director Aideen Barry presented an idea to recreate modernist buildings as cakes and later use them as props, creating an optical illusion of Kaunas architectural heritage truly being made of biscuit and cream.

A successful cooperation with Kaunas Food Industry and Trade Training Centre resulted in six large cakes of Kaunas modernist buildings. It took several bags of flour, 600 eggs, several dozen kilograms of sugar, and more than 20 kilograms of sugar mix for decorating to bake the following cakes in four days: Vytautas the Great War Museum, M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art,  The Palace for Firefighters, The Summerhouse of writer Pranas Mašiotas (“Mašiotynė”), Sugihara House, Kaunas Central Post Office, as well as the famous House of Aleksandra and Jurgis Iljinai on Donelaitis street. The largest cakes weighed almost 30 kilograms.

Postcard by E. Simonavičiūtė (2020), inspired by the cakes.

The cakes were prepared by teachers Rasa Virginija Venterienė, Giedrė Polikevičienė, Irena Žiužnienė, Kristina Krikštolaitienė and Janina Narbutienė, together with students Gabrielė Juraitytė, Erika Žukaitė, Emilija Kazakevičiūtė, Karigailė Klimaitė, Lina Danilevičiūtė, Sigita Kontrimienė, Agnė Lukošiūnaitė, Monika Gudavičiūtė, Gabrielė Grabauskaitė, Elizabet Matz, Erika Bagdonienė, Evelina Masedonskaitė, Laimutė Ona Račaitė, Milda Sadauskaitė and Rugilė Petronytė.

The cakes of Kaunas modernist architecture later inspired a designer at “Kaunas 2022” Eglė Simonavičiūtė; she created several cheerful postcards that were based on the photographs of the cakes taken by Marius Vizbaras.

Video Clips:

Kaunas Central Post Office, Vytautas the Great War Museum, M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, The Palace for Firefighters, House of the Iljinai family, Sugihara House,  Mašiotai family summerhouse (“Mašiotynė”).