One Can Can Make a Difference!
Two months of planning and trial builds paid off for Graham's Regina operating branch as they successfully competed in the food charity event, Canstruction®, held in Saskatchewan last March.
Canstruction® is a trademarked design/build competition held in cities throughout North America. Teams of architects, engineers and students mentored by their professors, compete to design and build giant structures made entirely out of canned foods. On average, it takes eight to 12 weeks and thousands of cans of food to create a structure.
Dustin Hassman, Senior Project Coordinator, Regina, led Graham's seven-person team that spent weeks of their personal time to design and construct a structure dedicated to the 2010 Olympic Games. Team members scoured every retail store in the city to find the correct colours to build their impressive entry. Over 3,500 food products were used to feature the five Olympic rings and a massive ski jump ramp built entirely out of tuna cans, pudding and Jell-O boxes. The centre piece showcased a 2.7 metre (9 foot) free-standing tower crane built out of chicken noodle soup cans. Graham's entry eventually placed runner-up for the People's Choice Award.
"It's a fun and overall worthwhile event to be involved in," says Hassman."While it's supposed to be a competition, it's really a remarkable creative outlet where you get to apply your knowledge of engineering to design and build something both exciting and eventually beneficial."
Each competing team's entry was displayed at a Regina shopping mall for a month. The public was invited to donate canned food at the time of the exhibition. Overall, Graham's team donated over $4K worth of canned goods, which were sent to the Regina Food Bank.
"What matters most is that the food banks and those in need benefit from the donations," he says. "Everyone's a winner no matter how you put it."
