Teams from all over Austin came together Saturday for some friendly competition and to help Central Texans facing hunger.
But which team will emerge victorious with the most awesome CANstruction of 2015? You decide: Cast your vote online now. Structures are on display at Barton Creek Square Mall in Austin through Sunday, November 22.
All food used in the structures is donated to the Capital Area Food Bank to help nourish your neighbors in need. Over the past six years, CANstruction has raised over 150,000 meals for hungry Central Texans.
Thank you to all the teams, sponsors and volunteers for your creativity and commitment to ending hunger. A special thank you goes to our sponsors: Barton Creek Square: A Simon Mall, Austin Foundation for Architecture, Advanced Discovery, MoveCorp, AIA Austin, and Opal Divine's.
Todd the TurCAN
Akins High School with support of Ryan Companies
Student-designed, Todd the TurCAN, is a reminder that Thanksgiving was originally a holiday about sharing. Todd’s layers are created by a variety of foods for the perfect Thanksgiving dinner. From veggies and meat to dessert there is something for everyone to enjoy. Todd’s body consists of wholesome black beans, corned beef and hash, and chilli which are perfect for a Texas-themed Thanksgiving on the range. Dessert is served using sugary sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie from his legs and feet. Do not forget the veggies dishes created from green beans, corn, and tomatoes from his tail and internal filler cans. The only thing missing for this Texas-sized Thanksgiving dinner is the turkey, but actually, Todd prefers ham. Share this Thanksgiving so everyone can “Gobble til’ you Wobble.”
Maheen Anjum – Team Capitan, Orlin Fuentes, Julia Jackola, Crystal Mendieta, and Emily Morales Avila
Cans Used 2,100
Ending Hunger Round and Round the World
Dunaway Associates
Hill & Wilkinson General Contractors
Our carousel includes 4,000 cans of food found in thousands of homes around the world, arranged in a whimsical depiction of an American icon – the carousel. Featured in the carousel are a horse, an elephant and a sleigh. The horse was chosen not only as a common feature of any carousel, but to represent what used to be the primary means of both producing and transporting food around the globe. This tribute to the ‘work horse’ signifies our continued efforts to spread nourishment across the world. The elephant was chosen to represent another staple in agriculture and locomotion, this time in Asia. Elephants have been used for thousands of years to bare the heavy loads of civilizations in the far east, and our elephant will help our team bare some of the burden caused by hunger. Finally, the sleigh was selected as another means of transporting food and provisions across the great Arctic expanses of the far north. The sleigh also represents togetherness. Much as a family may use a sleigh to travel and transport goods, so too will our sleigh be used to bring food to those who are in need, as we continue to fight hunger, together.
Sarah Willi – Team Captain, Kristy Attaway, Mike Carrell, Kristen Garlington, Makenzie Kuntz
Cans Used 4,000
Vote for Ending Hunger Round and Round the World
Turn the Tables on Hunger
American Society of Civil Engineers - Austin Chapter
Too many people in the Central Texas area and around the world are currently suffering from hunger. Let’s make a world where every man, woman and child doesn’t have to wonder where their next meal is coming from, if they will eat that day, or how they will feed their family. It’s time to turn the tables on hunger!
Kacey Cubine Paul - Team Captain, Drew Cave, Linda Barlow, Laura Friello, Lily Aung
Cans Used 1,000
Vote for Turn the Tables on Hunger
Ring of Fire
Walter P. Moore
Page
We have a burning desire to end hunger! Johnny Cash told us in “Ring of Fire” that “the taste of love is sweet,” but we think the taste of nutritious food on every table in Central Texas is even sweeter. This Ring of Fire is built from cans of Bush’s Baked Beans with flame-colored tops, arranged using a structural strategy that relies on the cans supporting each other like we support the hungry in our community. Join us in showing your love for your neighbors in need and help these flames grow higher – round up all your cans, and give your Cash to the Capital Area Food Bank!
Kyle Dunning - Team Captain, Shelby Blessing, Jen Bussinger, Anna Hernandez, Joe Gannon
Cans Used 3,000
Hunger Has Flown the Coop
Structures
Anderson High School
SpawGlass Contractors, Inc.
Food and shelter are two basic human needs, but one can be created from the materials at hand and the other must be sought out. Our birdcage combines both food and shelter into a single unit. The base of the cage is made up of a mix of canned green beans and carrots; the vertical bars are canned peaches, mandarin oranges, hominy, and canned beans. Each column consists of a single type of fruit. Tuna cans have been used for their compact size to add bulk to the structure. A mix of cans have been used to imitate the semblance of a newspaper floor for the cage. And because most cages tend to be table-top, a table cloth of cans hugs the base. We long for a world in which hunger will not be a worry. Until then, a search for resources is necessary for survival. Sometimes, it’s necessary to ‘fly the coop’ to achieve this goal.
Tom Quintero – Team Captain, Derek McDaniel, John Sperry, Jeff McIntosh, Shawn Yamanaka
Cans Used 2,500
Vote for Hunger Has Flown the Coop!
ACL Feast
Aspen Heights
H+UO Architects
Our team wants to relate our structure to Austin and have it resonate with the viewers. The iconic guitar and marquee is seen by thousands as they walk into the Austin City Limits Music Festival. “ACL Feast” combines some of the most commonly used canned goods to create a structure that is big, bold, and bright. The structure fills the max build dimensions in both length and in height with a larger than life 8-foot guitar. RAH-CAN-ROLL!
The annual Austin City Limits Music Festival provides our great city with all the music it can handle for 6 days. Our CANstruction team has encapsulated the ACL spirit and wants the “ACL Feast” to help provide the City of Austin with ample amounts of food to give out to those in need.
Adam Dreiss – Team Captain, Andrew Smith, Kiza McDonald, David Carroll, Randall Owen
Cans Used 2,500
"We CAN Give Hunger a Kick, Charlie Brown!"
Kiewit Building Group
BURY
Lucy: Come on, Charlie Brown, I’ll hold the ball and you kick it!
Charlie Brown: Hold it? Ha! You’ll pull it away and I’ll land flat on my back!
Lucy: But Charlie Brown, it’s Thanksgiving! One of the greatest traditions we have is the Thanksgiving Day football game and the biggest, most important tradition of all is the kicking off of the football!
During this Thanksgiving season, one of the greatest traditions that our team has is giving back to our fellow brothers and sisters in need who don’t have enough food on their tables. The majority of the canned food selected for our structure is canned chicken and can be added to many meals for a much-needed protein boost. We CAN give hunger a kick, Charlie Brown!
Phil Emanuel - Team Captain, Holly Marchant, Abby Fine, Grant Karr, Jennifer Finch
Cans Used 1,946
Vote for We CAN Give Hunger a Kick, Charlie Brown!
TyCANosaurus Rex - "Make world hunger go extinct"
Architectural Engineering Institute
The Bommarito Group
Turner Construction
Our team this year wanted to present a design that embodies a structural challenge and an interesting association to the Jurassic Park movie theme. The TyCANnosaurus Rex resembles a character that is very powerful and scary but no longer exists in our world. That is how we feel about world hunger, it is impacting people’s lives every day but needs to go extinct.
Abdul Alqaroot – Team Captain, Sofia Bruni, Rich Maynard, Rachel Schutte, Angel Trevino
Cans Used 1,300
Vote for TyCANnosaurus Rex - Make World Hunger Go Extinct
Solving the Hunger Puzzle
KGA Architecture
DCI Engineers
EEA Consulting Engineers
Kimley-Horn & Associates
Hoar Construction
This year, our team took on the challenge of solving a complex puzzle. No, it’s not the Rubik’s Cube – it’s hunger in Central Texas. But just like the Rubik’s Cube puzzle changes with every turn, so does the puzzle of feeding hungry Central Texans. One of the few constant needs to solve this hunger puzzle, is the need of good sources of protein. This is why we chose to use flat meat cans to create our design. In keeping true to the multi-color nature of the Rubik’s Cube we have utilized many different types of these flat cans. Our white and yellow cans are lean chicken, our red cans are savory salmon and the black, green, blue & purple cans are tasty tuna. While solving a Rubik’s Cube is hard, solving hunger is not – we can solve it one turn at a time.
Cathrine Cleavinger - Team Captain, Chris Hernandez, Morgan Stinson, Sam Lundquist, Tala Matchett
Cans Used 3,983
Vote for Solving the Hunger Puzzle
Etching Away Hunger
CTA Architects Engineers
Trimbault Contruction, Inc
SQUARE ONE Consultants, Inc.
Our team's focus this year was to target the issue of hunger in a way that also captured Austin's spirit of weirdness. By combining one of the city's most iconic images -- the "I Love You So Much" graffiti wall -- with a generous donation of 5,000 olive cans, the term "Olive You So Much" was brought to life. We chose the recognizable face of an Etch-A-Sketch toy as our CAN-vas, and intentionally left pixels missing from the word "Hunger" to complete the symbology of our message, "Etching Away Hunger."
Eric Biffle – Team Captain, Sarah Holnbeck, Daniel Bachelier, Rachelle Simon, Cathrine Tait
Cans Used 6,878
EmotiCAN
STG DESIGN
ROGERS O'BRIEN CONSTRUCTION
STG Design and Rogers O’Brien Construction are sending the MESSAGE about FACING hunger HEAD on. We brought to life two EmotiCAN faces that encourage the community to turn those frowns upside-down and spread the love to those in need. Our design is a larger than life representation of today’s most popular form of communication emerging from an iphone in order to send our message of support for nourishing the Central Texas community.
Christine Massoud – Team Captain, Jonathon Kortz, Alexandra Wildes, Marco Barrio, Mick Clark
Cans Used 1,822
