First-Year Design Students Plan for Seventh Annual CANstruction Event

Photo Submitted

This canned food was incorporated into designs created by first-year Fay Jones School of Architecture students at last year's CANstruction event. This year's event is planned for Friday, Nov. 15, on the plaza between the Arkansas Union and Mullins Library.

First-year Fay Jones School of Architecture students in the University Perspectives class are preparing for the seventh annual CANstruction event, to be held at noon Friday, Nov. 15, on the Central Quad plaza in front of the Arkansas Union.

About 130 first-year architecture, interior design and landscape architecture students and their mentors will construct sculptures from canned and packaged food they've collected. They can begin building their structures as early as 9:30 a.m. Prizes, awarded for most cans used, best overall design and best use of labels, will be announced at 12:30 p.m.

The students will donate the food to the University of Arkansas Full Circle Campus Food Pantry and the Fayetteville Public Schools Outback, which operates a food pantry for students.

The event started as the service project for the school's Leadership by Design class, now called University Perspectives, a course that prepares students in the design programs of architecture, interior design and landscape architecture for the rigorous and time-consuming education. First-year students are grouped with upper-level mentors for the semester-long course to address issues of time and stress management, strategies for balancing school and life, and opportunities to get to know others within the design disciplines.

The service project began seven years ago when Judy Brittenum, associate professor of landscape architecture, wanted the students to participate in something fun and design oriented while also serving the community. After some research, Brittenum and her colleague in the course, Laura Terry, associate professor of architecture, discovered the CANstruction project was a national charity event sponsored by the Society for Design Administration.

While this student event is much smaller in scale than the national event, due to the limited construction time, the students have been prolific in acquiring donations. In the last six years, students in the CANstruction competition have collected and donated about 20,000 food items to area community agencies.

"We're introducing them to community and public service in a design-oriented project that combines everything that we're about as a design community and a design school," said Brian Poepsel, an architecture instructor, who's helping to plan this year's event.

Judges for this year's event include Denise Garner, founder of Feed Fayetteville, a local organization dedicated to alleviating hunger in the community; Angela Oxford, director of the Center for Community Engagement at the U of A; and Fay Jones School architecture students Hector Bello and Abigail Charles.