Canstruction

Every year the Society for Design Administration has a contest called Canstruction. Its a food charity donation program where groups of architects and engineers form teams to build sculptures out of canned goods and other non-perishable food items. I'm not sure what the teams win, but at the end of the contest, all the food is donated to local food banks.

San Antonio has been a participating city for several years. One year the sculptures were assembled in the Central Library, which is how I became aware of this project. This year they were displayed at a mall. Mark and I went this afternoon to see them, and, unfortunately, we were not impressed. I remember the sculptures as being very colorful and whimsical, but the ones out there today were not nearly as good. Its possible that food labels have changed so that they are not as colorful. Perhaps the manufacturers are using more white space then they used to; I don't know. I do know that the sculptures were mostly blocky, dull blobs, except for the Norte Dame remake, which actually had some shape and color to it, but was still not quite live up to my expectations. I hope there's better stuff out there next year.

PS We don't know where the sculptures on the Canstruction website were hiding. We didn't see any of the ones posted there, except for Norte Dame.