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We love food in Toronto. With everything from fine dining to hipster havens to street food, Toronto's eclectic food scene has something to offer people of all tastes. With the range of food choices available to many of us, it is important to remember that hunger is still a major issue in the Greater Toronto Area. Since 2008, the Daily Bread Food Bank has witnessed a 9% increase in visits for the overall GTA, and an 11% increase in visits for the City of Toronto. Along with this statistic, the other numbers presented in Daily Bread's 2014 "Who's Hungry" report are troubling to say the least, showing worsening conditions especially in suburban areas of the GTA.
The annual CANstruction competition is one of the more visible ways that Daily Bread is helping to combat and raise awareness about hunger. Returning for its 16th year, the competition brings teams from the construction, architecture, design and engineering professions together, to create sculptures out of cans in the lobbies of the TD Bank, TD West, TD North and Ernst & Young towers in Toronto's Financial District. The twenty sculptures, consisting of 71,035 pounds of donated food, will be on display to the public until May 9th, before being disassembled and donated to the Daily Bread Food Bank.
“Canstruction is a unique type of food drive and a way for the design community to collaborate in a creative way and give back to the community we build in,” said Helen Kabriel, co-chair of Canstruction Toronto. “Not only do they give back through food donations, but their structures attract an audience and provoke discussions on hunger and the challenges facing our city.”
Since the inaugural event in 1999, CANstruction has donated over 860,000 pounds of food to the Daily Bread Food Bank. Originally held in November, the most recent three competitions have been held during the Spring, a time of year when donations are much less frequent. “The impact of Canstruction is enormous. It provides thousands and thousands of pounds of high quality and nutritious food at a time of year when donations typically fall off,” said Gail Nyberg, executive director of Daily Bread Food Bank. “Canstruction is incredibly important, especially at this time of year, when people may not be thinking about the food bank as much. It helps us to keep our hampers full and nutritious throughout the warm months,” said Nyberg. “The real winners of Canstruction are the 60,000 people who will use our food banks each and every month.”
The competition is judged based on a variety of factors including design aesthetics. Awards include ‘Best Use of Labels’ award, the “Best Meal” award, and the “Structural Ingenuity” award. The "People's Choice" award was introduced for last year's competition, and is returning again for 2015. This award encourages members of the public to vote on-line to vote by ‘liking’ a picture of their favourite ‘Canstructure’ on Facebook through the Canstruction Toronto page, with voting open until May 10.
The winning CANstructures were judged by a jury consisting of leaders in the design, achitecture and even cooking professions, including David Bowick, Principal at Blackwell Engineering , Diarmuid Nash, Partner at Moriyama & Teshima Architects, Diego Burdi, Creative Director at burdifilek , Elsa Lam, Editor of Canadian Architect magazine , and Susur Lee, Chef and Owner of Lee, Bent & Luckee restaurants.
This year's winners start off our look at all of the current entries.
Jurors' Favourite:
Fortuna
Structural Ingenuity:
Turner Fleischer Architects Inc.
Hunger is No Illusion
Best Meal:
CAN You Help Bridge The Gap?
Best Use of Labels:
Hunger for Sport
Honourable Mention:
Shifting Perspective (an homage to the former Still Life public art at Pearson Airport)
Other competition entries:
• Aecom Canada Ltd
• Aercoustics Engineering Limited
• AFHTO
• Arup Canada Inc.
• Cannon Design
• DIALOG
• Diamond Schmitt Architects with Read Jones Christoffersen Ltd.
• GM BluePlan Engineering Ltd.
• Echologics, A Division of Mueller Co.
• GHD
• PCL Constructors Canada Inc. with Entuitive
• Petroff Partnership Architects / ARK
• rebanks pepper littlewood architects inc.
• R.V. Anderson Associates Ltd.
• Ryerson University, Department of Architectural Science
You have until May 9th to visit the Toronto Dominion Centre tower lobbies to see this year's CANstruction sculptures. We look forward to the return of CANstruction in 2016.
