We went to The Architectural Jelly Banquet - an event created by former property PR agent Sam Bompas and architectural student Harry Parr to celebrate miniature buildings crafted from jelly as part of the London Festival of Architecture.

Imagine for a moment that three hundred years ago Sir Christopher Wren had a dream - a lucid dream, in which he rebuilt the razed city of London out of cattle entrails. The master engineers, bricklayers and architects of his day all toiling for seven long years at the great task. The material would pose many problems for the accomplished architect but each would be overcome by his thundering genius. By flattening a bull’s liver and reinforcing it with a mesh of intersewn rawhide he would create a grand replacement for the spire of St Paul's.

That is what I hoped would be the case here, but the reality fell a little short of the mark.

Iain McCaig, The Orangelly

Buildings made out of jelly, uplit and outlit by lightning strikes of camera flash were exhibited on the colonnade of the University College quadrangle. Flanking this was a brigade of Playboy bunnies twirling giant plastic spoons. The jelly prepared for our consumption was anaemic, foul-tasting and dearer than its weight in foie gras. It did succeed, at least, in a majestic wobble when disturbed by the digits of intrigued onlookers.

Heston and Playmates

Moving on, there was a large pit filled with red jelly, pitched as a battlefield for a jelly-wrestling contest. This didn't quite fulfil my expectations for a violent, orgiastic frenzy. However, the spectacle of a middle-aged gentleman grappled with a pair of inebriated teenage girls  gave ample disruption to Heston Blumenthal’s jelly-judging ceremony.

Jelly Wrestling

I think the inspiration best taken from this event would be to create your own jelly from scratch, and thus really engage with the matter. Obtain an industrial furnace, slaughter a vertebrate of your choosing, burn its bones and collect the melted collagen in a pot. Next, find or create a blank canvas or mould to apply structure and add flavourings as desired.

It isn't such a great leap from the ground animal bones that make up jelly to the steel girder ribcage that forms the invisible structure of skyscrapers. Original architecture, our very own glorious bodies, are made of no more than a flesh wrapper around our jelly skeletons.

Walter Chefitz, Opening Flower Jelly

The mood of the JellyBall which followed the main event was light, like the helium balloons floating above the quad. This was not the problem. Jelly is no serious matter, but the promise of shock, awe and originality quickly gave way to the atmosphere of a debauched student extrav. I wish the below image was the freshly shed blood of some young undergrad.

Jellurinal

Why not use whole animal carcasses? How about a Taj Mahal made out of peas. Soufflé! What about soufflé? It’s consistency rivals that of jelly, tastes superior, is fiddly to make and has an inferior tensile strength which could only add a delicious element of challenge. I left the JellyBall disappointed, and that night my dreams were filled with melting cathedrals, sloppy skyscrapers and tasteless tower blocks. Sir Christopher wept.

You can bid on some of the jellies displayed at the Banquet over at www.jellymongers.co.uk - the lowest reserve is currently £40 for Grimshaw, Foster + Partners' gelatine version of the Eden Project. Hurry though, as bidding ends 4 Aug!