CANstruction Toronto’s ‘caring’ creations soar to new heights

TORONTO — A Care Bear, a blue jay and a ‘Terminator’ skull are among the winners of this year’s CANstruction Toronto contest.

The annual design competition, now in its 22nd year, invites architecture and engineering firms to create structures out of canned food to help shine a light of food insecurity in the city.

This year, 21 teams across the city created 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.

The winner of the Structural Ingenuity Award was an illuminated Care Bear structure called Sharing Can Bear Care and was by Diamond Schmitt Architects. A Terminator skull, the Cantunator, by Gensler Architecture and Design won the honourable mention award.

This year also marked the introduction of a new award category: Most Cans Used. The winning entry by Turner Fleischer Architects used 9,972 cans to create a glass bottle featuring an SOS message. 

A final category, which was not announced during the awards ceremony, was the People’s Choice Award, given to the structure whose picture receives the most likes on the CANstruction Toronto Instagram page.

Announced on May 18, the winner was Striking out food waste – here’s to filling bases and bellies by Q4 Architects. Its design includes a blue jay.

To date, CANstruction Toronto has donated over one million pounds of food to Daily Bread Food Bank. This year, 71,000 cans were used across all 21 designs.