CANstruction 2017
CANstruction 2017
The story of our 2017 Canstruction sculpture takes inspiration from a captivating children’s book “My Father’s Dragon.” After receiving the 2016 Canstruction International Citywide Competition Award for “Beat Meal,” Kodet again teamed up with the Minneapolis City of Lakes Rotary Club and numerous other generous sponsors to participate in the 12th Annual Canstruction Minneapolis exhibition.
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 exhibition benefits Second Harvest Heartland.
This was the third year that we participated, and the sculpture is described below by Kodet team members:
This sculpture depicts a young boy reading his own story. Looking over his shoulder is the blue and yellow dragon he freed from captivity. “My Father’s Dragon” is an enchanting children’s book about a young boy collaborating with his animal friends to create a better world. Our Canstruction story is very similar. Kodet Architectural Group collaborated with the Minneapolis City of Lakes Rotary Club and many other sponsors to donate this sculpture. Together with Second Harvest Heartland, we are “dragging-away” hunger.
“My Father’s Dragon” carries a special significance to our prime supporters at the Minneapolis City of Lakes Rotary Club. Each week, the Rotary Club’s guest speaker will sign a book to be donated to Way to Grow, a Minneapolis non-profit dedicated to early childhood education.
For our structure, you will find our characters sitting on clouds made of cream corn. The boy and the dragon are made of different tunas, chicken, and albacore as these types of items are greatly needed at food shelves.
We felt the theme “Dragon Away Hunger” fit well as Canstruction® brings people together to help feed one another and, overall, eliminate hunger. In this book, although the main characters do not know one another, they help one another and slowly become friends to create a better world for all the animals and people around them.
The competition took place in the main Rotunda of the Mall of America on Saturday, September 16, and the structures were on display until Monday evening, September 18, when everything was “DeCanstructed” and all of the cans went to Second Harvest Heartland. A total of six teams participated this year.
We would like to thank all of our sponsors! Our participation in the event would not have been possible without the support of the many firms and organizations who generously donated:
Community Partner: Minneapolis City of Lakes Rotary Club
Business Partners: Hy-Vee, PSI, and RJM Construction
Team Partners: Midwestern Drilling, Keith Moeller, CPA, CFP of Northwestern Mutual, Envirachem, Thrivent Financial, Franz Reprographics, Inspec, CAD Technology Center, Metro Brick, W.L. Hall, Metro Buidling Companies, Aluspec, Forbo Flooring Systems, Cub Foods, Lunds & Byerlys, and Kyatchi.
Thank you to Westwood and Second Harvest Heartland who coordinate the event.
Additionally, thank you to the Kodet employees, friends and family who gave your support, time, and donations. We truly appreciate it!
From the generosity of those who supported our team, we purchased over 8,900 cans to build our structure. This year, our team decided to push our creativity and building abilities with a much more difficult design. Given the nature of a dragon, we knew we would be pushing the limits on the structural possibilities. Since Second Harvest Heartland always has a need for canned meats, we wanted to incorporate as many of those small cans as possible into our structure. This enabled our design to have more detail and intricacies, while also increasing the number of cans required. Our structure was 10’ wide, 10’ long, and almost 8’ tall! We enjoyed the design-build process as we watched the boy and dragon come to life through the different cans and placement applications.
Click here to see a time lapse video of the build. Though it took many hours to build, we DeCanstructed very quickly. Click here to watch the time lapse of the DeCanstruction.
At the Awards Ceremony on Sunday, September 17 we were presented three awards! We were honored to have eared awards for “Best Original Design,” Structural Ingenuity” and People’s Choice Award!” It was incredible to watch the teams come together as they build their sculptures to raise awareness of local hunger. The energy and enthusiasm from team members and mall spectators was fantastic. We were honored to participate in the cause and do our part for “Dragon Away Hunger.”
