CANstruction
Kodet Architectural Group, Ltd. and the Minneapolis City of Lakes Rotary Club with the support of RJM Construction, Metro Brick, Inc., Thrivent Financial, and Metro Building Companies participated in the 10th Annual Minneapolis CANstruction event on September 26, 2015 at the Mall of America. CANstruction is an event where architecture, engineering, and construction firms participate in a competition creating structures entirely out of cans. CANstruction was created to help raise awareness of hunger, and over 150 cities across the globe host CANstruction events to benefit local hunger relief. The Minneapolis event benefits Second Harvest Heartland.
Our theme was a celebration of the Minnesota State Fair! Our structure included some of the quintessential and iconic State Fair images: the milk barn, Space Tower, Giant Slide, crowds of people, and of course, the food: corn on the cob, pronto pups, and everything on a stick! Two walls served as a blue sky back drop to the multi-colored crowd below. The milk barn was made up of red and white cans at the roof; the slide used green and yellow cans with multi-colored cans representing the kids and adults enjoying the ride. The Space Tower used two vertical rows of deep blue & white cans, and was complete with its red spire on top. The giant ear of corn was made of yellow corn cans and green cans for the husk. The back wall had a corn dog on a stick and a donut on a stick which also looked like the number 10 (for the Minneapolis CANstruction anniversary). The words “MN STATE FAIR” were spelled out with cans on the back wall.
The State Fair theme came from our love of the fair, as well as an inspiration from our partner, the City of Lakes Rotary Club. As the Kodet Team’s Community Partner, Rotary members helped Kodet build the structure as part of a fun, hands-on, community service event. Kodet’s Business Partner for the event was RJM Construction.
This was the first year Kodet participated in this event, so the team had a huge learning curve in creating the structure as well a short time frame to complete the fundraising. We planned the design and raised funds in two months and then did two weekends of practice builds before the final event at the Mall of America. We thankfully learned that cans don’t roll too much once they are placed but every two to three layers needs a leveling agent because stacked cans will topple. The total can count for our structure was 5,715 with 16 different types of cans. The structure received the “Best Use of Labels” award.
The team is very excited about next year’s competition and is already thinking of design ideas and will soon begin raising money. If you are interested in supporting next year’s structure contact Kelly Martinez at kmartinez@kodet.com.
