Canstruction NYC returns to Lower Manhattan this week, with more than two dozen creative and gravity-defying designs made up of unopened cans of food that will be distributed to feed the poor after the display is taken apart.
More than 100,000 unopened cans of food are stacked into larger-than-life sculptures, before disassembly and donation to City Harvest for distribution to some 500 soup kitchens and food pantries across New York City.
Canstruction NYC is an art exhibit that feeds homeless and hungry New Yorkers, and an art competition, with 26 teams participating.
This year is the 28th annual Canstruction NYC, which was held virtually in 2020 and returns in person in 2021.
More than two dozen gravity-defying constructions made of cans of food will be on display Nov. 04, 2021 through Nov. 15, 2021, Mondays-Saturdays, 10am–8pm; Sundays, 12–6pm, at Brookfield Place in the World Financial Center.
The artwork is on display FREE until the last day, when it closes at 5pm, when it closes for dismantling and the cans are donated to feed hungry New Yorkers.
Donate Canned Food
Visitors are encouraged to bring a donation of non-perishable canned food, such as tuna, beans or canned vegetables.
Your offerings will be donated to City Harvest along with the cans used in the competition.
Donate canned food at the donation bin located at 230 Vesey Street, Level 2.
Canstruction New York raises hunger awareness by challenging teams of the city’s top architecture and engineering design firms and the students they mentor to transform the cans into larger-than-life pop-art masterpieces.
Canstruction New York has donated more than 2 million pounds of food to local food banks since 1993, and over 1.2 million pounds to City Harvest since 2006.
Since 1992, Canstruction has raised nearly 82 million pounds of food for hunger relief organizations around the world with its signature, trademarked CanArt.
Click here for images from the 2017 competition.
As with many things, like Restaurant Week, which started here in NYC and have been copied around the world, NYC is now joined by more than 150 cities across North America and other countries such as Australia and New Zealand which hold Canstruction® Competitions..
Highlighting the creativity and compassion of top architectural and engineering firms, these astounding structures are helping to change the world – by lifting the spirits of those in need, by raising public awareness, and most importantly, by collecting millions of pounds of food for local food banks.
Directions to Brookfield Place or View a map
Each Canstruction team spends months planning and designing their entries, but are only allowed one adrenaline-filled overnight span to meticulously stack and color coordinate cans into ingenious and playful feats of design.
Participants compete for top honors in categories including Best Use of Labels, Best Meal, Structural Ingenuity, Most Cans, and Jurors’ Favorite. Winners are chosen by an elite team of judges culled from the architectural, design and culinary fields.
City Harvest pioneered food rescue and works with Canstruction each Thanksgiving season to distribute canned goods to New Yorkers in need.
After the last in-person competition, in 2019, City Harvest collected more than 80,000 pounds of food, helping to feed more than 26,000 hungry families in New York City for a day
Canstruction® New York is a 501(c)(3) Corporation. 
is an international charity competition where architects, engineers, contractors and students they mentor, compete to design and build giant structures made entirely from full cans of food. At the close of the New York City competition all of the food from the cansculptures and food donations from the public will be donated to 
Directions to Brookfield Place or View a map
Canstruction Fast Facts:
* More than 250 structures composed of 936,558 cans (752,617 lbs) have been created in the decade Canstruction NYC has been at Brookfield Place
* Canstruction NYC is the largest annual donation of canned food from a single event to City Harvest
* Teams will compete for eight possible awards; Best Original Design, Structural Integrity, Best Meal, Most Cans, People’s Choice, Cheri C. Melillo Award, and two for Honorable Mention
About Canstruction
Founded by the Society for Design Administration New York Chapter in 1992, Canstruction® is a trademarked design/build competition currently held in cities throughout North America and around the world. Teams of architects, engineers, and students mentored by these design professionals compete to design and build giant structures made entirely out of full cans of food. It takes 8-12 weeks of design time and thousands of cans of food to create a structure that is built in a single night. The results are displayed to the public as magnificent sculpture exhibits in each city where a competition is held.
The public is invited to donate canned food at the time of the exhibition. At the close of the exhibitions, the cans of food are donated to local food banks. New York is one of more than 150 cities around the world taking part in Canstruction International Competition, which has donated more than 40 million pounds of food to local programs since its founding.
About City Harvest
City Harvest pioneered food rescue in 1982 and, this year, will collect 55 million pounds of excess food to help feed the nearly 1.4 million New Yorkers struggling to put meals on their tables. Through relationships with farms, grocers, restaurants, and manufacturers, City Harvest collects nutritious food that would otherwise go to waste and delivers it free of charge to 500 soup kitchens, food pantries and other community food programs across the five boroughs.
In addition to helping meet the immediate need for food, City Harvest developed long-term Healthy Neighborhoods programs which partner with low-income communities to increase access to fresh produce and help residents shop for and cook nutritious, budget-conscious meals. To learn more about food rescue, Healthy Neighborhoods and fighting hunger in New York City, visit cityharvest.org.
[…] Place also hosts Canstruction each November, which is fanciful constructions made of various sizes of cans, also donated to City Harvest after […]