Freestore Foodbank announces winners of CANstruction Art competition | Arts & Culture

CINCINNATI, OH (FOX19) - The Freestore Foodbank announced the winners of this year’s Canstruction art competition, which challenged 9 local design, architecture, construction and engineering firms to build giant sculptures made entirely of canned goods and non-perishable foods. The exhibit has already collected over 37,000 cans for donation to the Freestore Foodbank, including the cans used in the sculptures and donated during a food drive competition between non-participating firms around the city.

The exhibit will remain on display through March 20 at five downtown locations – the Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts, the Contemporary Arts Center, the Duke Energy Headquarters Building, the Scripps Center and the Public Library of Cincinnati. Visitors to the five exhibit sites can see this year’s winning sculptures and support Canstruction in its fight against hunger by donating a canned good or non-perishable item as the cost of “admission.”

This year’s winning sculptures included the following:

• Jurors' Favorite – "Hunger is Hard to Bear!" – Turner Construction Company
• Structural Ingenuity – "Blow the Horn on Hunger" – Hixson Architecture, Engineering, Interiors, Inc.
• Best Use of Labels – "Putting the Pieces Together to End Hunger” – CR architects + design/The Quandel Group
• Best Meal – "Strikeout Hunger" – Cincinnati State Technical & Community College, ASCE Student Chapter
• Honorable Mentions:
  • "Blast Hunger to a Galaxy Far, Far Away" – PEDCO E & A Services/Sysco Foods
  • "Catching Hunger is No ‘Can of Corn’" – BHDP Architecture/Messer Construction

In addition, this year’s “CAN Spirit Award” went to Turner Construction Company for “Hunger is Hard to Bear,” built with 6,204 cans. Michael Schuster Associates took home the “Food Barrel Challenge Award” for raising more than 9,050 cans.

Winners of Cincinnati’s Canstruction Art Exhibit, the local arm of a national charity that combines the competitive spirit of a design contest with a unique way to feed the hungry, will move on to the national Canstruction competition in May. Photos of Cincinnati’s winners will be submitted to the national Canstruction panel and compared to the winners from more than 100 Canstruction competitions around the U.S. in order to determine a national winner.

Locally the competition is co-sponsored by the Cincinnati Chapters of the Society for Design Administration and the American Institute of Architects.  Other contributors include: Jaguar/Land Rover of Cincinnati; the American Council of Engineering Companies – Cincinnati Region; the Society for Marketing Professional Services – Greater Cincinnati Chapter; Media Sponsor, Cincy Chic Magazine; Community Outreach Sponsor, The Women’s Book;  ARC; First Star Safety; The Kroger Co.; Selvaggio Teske + Associates; Heapy Engineering; Thelen Associates; KLH Engineers; Prus Construction; J.K. Meurer Corporation; USI Insurance; The Weston Art Gallery; the Contemporary Arts Center; Duke Energy; and the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.

Since the local competition began in 1997, Cincinnati’s “architects of food” have donated more than 425,000 pounds of food to the FreestoreFoodbank.