Giant Sculptures Made of Canned Food Take Over Brookfield Place in NYC

Brookfield Place's annual Canstruction® installation is an indoor art walk unlike any other. As you stroll through the shopping center you'll come across a massive melting ice cream cone, beloved cartoon characters, and icons of the Broadway stage—all made out of canned food for a good cause.

Canstruction® is an annual design competition in which teams of architects, engineers, and contractors craft sculptures entirely out of unopened cans of food. There are 23 teams competing this year including such firms as Beyer Blinder Belle,  Gensler, Urban Architectural Initiatives (UAI), Stantec, and more. The teams were hard at work live-building each piece on Halloween and now their creations are on view for all to see.

This year, teams cleverly paid homage to historic moments of 2024 including the total solar eclipse and the Paris Olympics. There are also 3D portraits of Broadway characters like Audrey II (the plant from Little Shop of Horrors) and Elphaba from Wicked. Movie characters (Remy from Rattatoullie), Pokemon creatures, and figures from history like Rosie the Riveter are represented as well.

The mission of Canstruction® is to raise funds and donations for and awareness of hunger relief programs. Over 2 million pounds of food have been donated to local food banks since Canstruction® began in 1993. Every year, the cans that make up the sculptures are given to City Harvest to help feed those in need. Keeping with the theme of fighting hunger, each sculpture has a playful name. Those pictured above are titled: We CAN Do It! by Buro Happold, Ding-Dong, Hunger’s Dead! by Gensler, Squirtle’s CANvolution by EP Engineering, and Little Shop of Hunger by Simpson Gumpertz & Heger.

A jury of New York City professionals in design, architecture, and engineering, as well as journalism and the culinary arts, will select winners for the following categories on November 4th: Best Original Design, Best Use of Labels, Structural Ingenuity, Best Meal, Most Cans, and two honorable mentions.

Canstruction® is on view from 10:00 am until 7:00 pm, now through November 11th inside Brookfield Place at 230 Vesey Street. You can join a free guided tour of the exhibition, or walk through on your own with this map. Don't forget to bring your own can of food to contribute to the cause!