Questions, call or e-mail Deborah Dik at 616-340-6200 or deborahdik@yahoo.com
2009 Canstruction
As many of you know, AIA Grand Valley teamed with Kendall College of Art & Design, Miller Canfield, and the Salvation Army in order to create the first ever Canstruction competition in Grand Rapids. This event was also known as Canned Rapids and garnered much local media attention, as well as (and more importantly) providing a significant amount of canned goods to the Salvation Army food bank.
This year’s Canstruction was intended to be a fun and innovative charity competition among local designers, students, architects, and contractors. The event included a total of five teams which completed five sculptures--created exclusively from cans and other packaged food products.
These five teams included three local AIAGV firms--Paradigm Design, Integrated Architecture, and Fishbeck Thompson Carr & Huber. These firms provided the cans for their designs through donations and diligent work while also spending countless hours planning, designing, and constructing their concepts.
The AIAGV board would like to specifically thank these firms for their participation in this event and for their steadfast support of those less fortunate and those in need during these tough economic times. It is through actions like these that we, as architects, can make positive contributions to our communities and become the citizen leaders that our region needs.
This is also an opportunity for all of our members to see the hard work of these three firms, who stepped up and delivered.
We hope that many of you will see this work and decide to join this project next year, when we hope to double the number of teams and, ultimately, the number of cans donated.
This year we collected over 13,000 cans from these five teams, and the AIA Grand Valley was a big part of that. So, again, many thanks to these three companies and their commitment to the profession and the community.
Fishbeck Thompson Carr & Huber
Integrated, JDH, and Pioneer
Paradigm
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