The links between architecture and cuisine, which traditionally reveal the dominant flavors of a region, are breaking.

Architects often design the accessories of eating -- dishware, glasses, cutlery, dining tables and chairs – so perhaps it was inevitable that they would eventually take on the food itself. This summer in New York, Maya Lin organized an auction of architect-designed cakes to benefit the Greyston Foundation, a Yonkers-based non-profit organization that provides community services and also operates a bakery. Participants included Frank Gehry, Rafael Viñoly, Steven Holl, and Richard Meier. While the charity event was just good fun to serve a good cause, it became yet another opportunity for celebrity architects to show off their signature styles, in this case translated into another medium -- one that happens to be edible. Gehry’s sketches featured rolling waves of dough, a baker’s Bilbao. Not surprisingly, Meier’s submission was a "white cake." With icing substituting porcelain panels, his recipe is the gustatory equivalent of his High Museum in Atlanta.