CANstruction Toronto, now in it’s 22nd year, is an annual design competition that creates structures out of canned food, to help shine a light on the severity of food insecurity in the city.
This year, 21 teams from different architecture and engineering firms across the city used their ingenuity to create dazzling sculptures using cans of shelf-stable food.
Each entry was judged by a jury of industry experts during the Awards Ceremony held on May 14. Some of this year’s designs include an illuminated Care Bear structure that was the winner of the Structural Ingenuity Award, and a Terminator skull, which won the Honourable Mention Award. This year also marked the introduction of a new award category: Most Cans Used. The winning entry used 9,972 cans to create a glass bottle featuring an SOS message.
While most of the competition’s awards were distributed during the Awards Ceremony, there is one final category that will recognize its winner on May 18. The People’s Choice Award is given to the structure whose picture receives the most likes on the CANstruction Toronto Instagram page. If you’d like to vote for your favourite, be sure to visit their page, and “like” your design of choice. Voting officially closes on May 18 at 1:00 pm (EST).
The structures will be on display until May 17, at TD Centre in the Financial District. We encourage you to see the designs in person and to learn more about the aspects of food insecurity that each team represented with their design.
To date, Canstruction Toronto has donated over 1 million pounds of food to Daily Bread Food Bank. This year, 71,000 cans were used across all 21 designs, and we are so grateful for this support.
During the Awards Ceremony, Daily Bread’s CEO, Neil Hetherington, thanked this year’s participants and organizers, saying, “What you have done is an outward expression of your incredible talent and your incredible commitment to our city.”
We are grateful to each person who was involved in this year’s competition. We’d also like to recognize all 40 of the Daily Bread volunteers who will be deconstructing the designs so that the 71,000 cans can be sorted and distributed to our member agencies across the city.
Together, we CAN end hunger in our city.
