Xpressionz of an Architect

This is a competition where all local architectural firms unite and serve the cause of giving back to the community. We create sculptures or structures out of food cans and raise money thru the exhibitions. Every year there is a new theme for this canstruction. This is a good cause to support; it feeds the homeless thru the food bank. We are a part of this from the past two years. This is our second time. This year the theme was “wonders of the world”. We decided to create the Spiral Minaret of Samarra. It’s an age old wonder of the Middle East. We created the top spiral part of it. The challenge was creating the arches and spiralness of the tower. There is a lot of work which goes around for months before the actual competition. We raise money so that we can buy food cans. The more we raise the better structure we make. We get the cans in a month ago and start mocking up our structure. The whole process is so interesting. At the final build-out day all the cans are delivered on site where we build our structure. You wonder how they must have created at the olden times without the technology of today. We started facing problems as we started getting higher more than 5′-0″. Our cans started toppling due to the weight from the layers above. Gosh that was so shocking to see our cans topple especially when you have spent 5 hours stacking them. We had to come up with something. We started putting our heads together and trying bunch of different things. We didn’t excel at the first shot but did at the third attempt. I saw the human spirit likes to soar and conquer difficulties when it’s challenged. We also got an award this year; all that effort was worth it. Our structure received the “Best Use of Labels”. Here is the link to the official website for construction (www.canstruction.org).