Cans of tuna, sardines, and tomato paste, don't exactly sound like the building blocks for success, but for almost 20 years, these types of cans have been used to create life size design structures for social change.
Last week marked the closing of Canstruction, a project founded by the Society for Design Administration, and one of the most unique food charities to date. The program is in its 19th year and has managed to collect 13 million pounds of canned goods since 1992.
This year, 70,779 pounds of canned goods have been counted thus far. It is expected that close to 100,000 cans of food will go towards feeding hungry people and families in New York. After Canstruction, City Harvest acquires the canned goods and distributes them to nearly 600 community food agencies that they serve. "The exhibit is a nice way to illustrate and address the issue of hunger in New York City," Lisa Sposato, senior manager of food sourcing at City Harvest said. "This is the busiest time of year for us, and we use Canstruction to help raise awareness and collect food to feed the hungry," she said.
Even in it's 19th year, Canstruction brings new and creative ideas to the forefront. It is a design competition that uses donated and purchased canned foods to create masterpieces. "The idea of taking something as prosaic as a can of tuna, soup or beans and creating an inspired work of art really engages people of all ages," co-chair of Canstruction New York, Amy Nanni, said. This year, design teams replicated a larger than life Converse sneaker, a seahorse, bowling pins, an Angry Bird, the Titanic, and more hunger-fighting structures.
Twenty-six design teams signed up this year to be a part of Canstruction. Design teams range from employees of design, engineer and architecture firms, as well as large companies like American Express and Skanska USA. While designers have months to plan and draft their desired structure, they are only allowed to put together the structure the night before.
A panel of design experts judge the applicants -- featured judges include editor at Interior Design magazine Annie Block, HGTV's Chip Wade, and Michael Arad who designed the World Trade Center Memorial. The structures are analyzed and judged on categories such as "Best Use of Labels," "Best Meal" and "Structural Ingenuity."
All of the canned food goes towards helping New Yorkers have a happy holiday season. Canstruction can be seen annually in the weeks proceeding Thanksgiving in over 100 cities across the world. In New York City, Canstruction has been held in the World Financial Center for the last four years. The World Financial Center hosts this free event and other free events throughout the year, courtesy of their arts department. "Canstruction is a perfect example of using art to help to understand issues," Debra Simon, World Financial Center artistic director of arts, said. "This event and other events show that we can use art in its own way to solve social issues."
