RAND Cans Hunger

RAND’s Canstruction sculpture “Hounding Hunger,” which was built with 2,568 cans, won the “Best Meal” award.

Two weeks after I joined RAND as a Senior Structural Engineer this summer, I received an email from our human resources manager announcing this year’s New York Canstruction competition and inviting RAND staff to participate. Canstruction is a design and charity event held in cities throughout the world in which teams use full cans of food to build unique sculptures, which are then displayed as a public art exhibition. After a few weeks on display, the sculptures are disassembled (“deCANstructed”) and the cans are donated to local food banks.

RAND has participated in Canstruction for several years as part of the firm’s RAND Gives Back program, and everyone involved has had fun. I decided taking part would be a good way to get to know my new coworkers better as well as contribute to a worthy cause, so I volunteered for this year’s team. Because of my structural engineering training, I was asked to be the team captain. I enjoy a challenge so I accepted, though I was a bit concerned that as the company’s newest employee I had just signed up for a trial by fire!

After tossing around a couple of concepts for our sculpture, my Canstruction teammates and I came up with the idea of a puppy. We envisioned our “can-ine” as big, bright, and beautiful! To make it visually interesting, we used a variety of cans with different color labels, including beans, corn, sausage, sardines, and condensed milk.

Over the next few weeks of planning our sculpture and late nights of dry assembly, I got to know my Canstruction colleagues both professionally and personally. By the time Build Night came on November 5 at Brookfield Place in lower Manhattan, we were a tight-knit group and well-oiled machine. As the night went on and our can-nine slowly took shape, we could see that passersby and fellow Canstruction participants were enjoying our sculpture as it approached its finished form.

We laid the last can to top off our doggy’s ear around 2:00 AM, approximately eight hours after starting. (Watch the time lapse video of our Canstruction team in action.) My RAND teammates and I were physically and mentally spent after the build but also proud that we transformed our design idea into reality. And it was gratifying to know that the 2,568 cans used to build our puppy as well as the approximately 72,000 cans from all of the other Canstruction sculptures would go to City Harvest to feed hungry New Yorkers.

At the Canstruction award ceremony in Battery Park on November 10, my teammates and I were ecstatic that our sculpture, which we named “Hounding Hunger,” won the award for Best Meal! On top of that recognition, the Canstruction committee asked RAND to rebuild our puppy next year at a prominent location to be determined to promote Canstruction and raise awareness of hunger in New York.

RAND’s Canstruction team enjoys some pre-build bonding.

I owe a big thanks to my RAND teammates Moulee Basumalik, Eugene Bush, Zohaib Dar, Alina DeJesus, Orey Graham, Christine Hobson, Sara Macias, Lisa Meyer, Andrew Reynolds, Margaret Nash, and Jeanine Smith for their hard work, patience, and can-do attitude in making this year’s Canstruction a fun and successful event, and to RAND’s President Stephen Varone for sponsoring the team’s participation. And congratulations to the other Canstruction teams and the winning sculptures, which included Rodin’s The Thinker, the Statue of Liberty’s torch, an apple core, and a seal balancing a ball on its nose.

Our puppy stood guard at the lobby of the World Financial Center at 250 Vesey Street until November 20, along with the other Canstruction sculptures in the Winter Garden at Brookfield Place. For more on the event, visit CanstructionNY and host Arts Bookfield.

RAND is proud to take a stand with our cans against hunger, and we’re looking forward to next year’s Canstruction event!

Ana Sandoval is a Senior Structural Engineer at RAND.