Canstruction enlists the world's best designers to play with their food, and then donate it.
Canstruction, a nonprofit not only creating beautiful sculptures made from food, also aims to fight hunger in the process. Canstruction explains that their mission is "to feed the hungry while shining a spotlight on the design industry." Since 1992 they have been facilitating design contests where participants craft ambitious installations using canned goods. Competitions are held around the world, and teams can spend months planning their grand designs, but are only given 12 hours to construct their idea. Once complete, their creations are judged based on categories like "Best Use of Labels Award," "Best Meal Award," and "Structural Ingenuity Award." The final entries can be viewed by the public for free—if they donate a can of food. The cans that have been collected, and the ones used in making these monumental works of art, are then donated to local food banks.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ6nRTfKXH8
Teams have created everything from arctic snow scenes, giant beehives and balloon dogs, like the one seen in the video above entered by Gensler & WSP Flack+Kurtz's in New York's Canstruction competition this year. Since the competition's inception, over 17.5 million pounds of food have been donated to community organizations. Art and food have always had a long history together, but this takes it a step further, by helping those in need while bringing the public something pretty cool to look at.