CANstruction Project: Architecture Students Collecting Food, Getting Ready to Build

Photo Submitted

This "pumpCAN," created by a team of landscape architecture students, won the grand prize in the 2008 CANstruction event. (Photo by Russell Cothren.)

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Students in the Fay Jones School of Architecture are gathering canned foods and working up design schemes to prepare for their third annual CANstruction competition. The event will take place from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6, at the Peace Fountain in front of Vol Walker Hall. In the event of rain, the competition will be held in the second floor gallery of Vol Walker.

The CANstruction teams are made up of all the freshmen in the Jones School, led by upperclass mentors. The students have a few weeks to prepare designs and collect donated cans from local businesses; they have 40 minutes to build their design using the cans they’ve collected. The cans that are used in the competition are donated to local food pantries, which also provide a few of the judges for the competition.

This is the third year for CANstruction, and in that short time it has become an “institutional event,” according to Judy Brittenum, associate professor of landscape architecture. The competition was developed to help first-year students learn to succeed in a demanding program. But the public service element is just as important, helping students become a part of the Fayetteville and northwest Arkansas community.

 “The first year we collected these cans, we were told by the agency involved that we collected enough to stock their pantry for six months,” Brittenum said. “Everyone knows that Thanksgiving and Christmas make greater demands on these pantries, so we want to provide all the goods we can for the year to come as well.

“Last year we collected 4,100 cans, a considerable increase on the 1,300 we collected in our first year,” she said. “This year we hope to have even more, and we are focusing on a healthy food pantry as designated by the Faith in Action group, one recipient of our donations. We will even have a prize for ‘most healthy items’ to show our support for these needs.”

Prizes are also awarded for “Most Cans,” “Best Use of Labels” and “Overall Achievement.”