Wentworth CM Club Builds Towering Canstructure for Charity
Wentworth Institute of Technology’s Construction Management Club participated in Canstruction Boston 2023, a charity event where teams of architects, designers, engineers, and contractors compete in awe-inspiring feats of engineering to create sculptures made from canned goods and other non-perishable food items-without the use of glue or other adhesives.
This year’s theme was “Celebrating New England.” The CM Club chose to build the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse, which is located in Maine.
The team which consisted of 11 student members including Melanie Chaves, Kiera Dempsey, Angela Pham, Liv Di Stefano, Maria Vallas, Carson Roberge, Bella Gillis, Brody Borden, Adriana Dimeo, Tom Kot, team leader William Maynard-Pimentel, and Advisor Michael D’Agostino.
The team practiced building the Canstructure on campus before the competition Build Day, which took place on October 20 at the Boston Society for Architecture (BSA) Space at 290 Congress Street in Boston. Cans were acquired through CM Club solicitation and donations.
The CM Club used 495 cans to build a lighthouse that stood over eight feet tall. The build time was approximately 2.5 hours.
The CM Club competed against six other teams including Wilson Butler Architects, Nitsch Engineering, Prellwitz Chilinski Associates (PCA), Simpson, Gumpertz & Heger, Cube 3, and the team of D.C. Beane & Gensler. Wentworth’s group was the only student team invited to compete in this event.
The Wentworth CM Club was proud to take home two awards from this year’s competition. The awards ceremony was held the evening of November 1 at the BSA Space, and the CM Club was the recipient of “The People’s Choice Award” and “Best Use of Labels Award.”
The seven Canstructures from this year’s event managed to gather a total of 14,466 cans that will be donated to the Merrimack Valley Food Bank, Inc. The Merrimack Valley Food Bank serves 69,425 people per month. In 2022 they distributed just under 4 million pounds of food, equal to more than 3 million meals.
Since 2011 Canstruction Boston has provided nearly 600,000 pounds of food (or nearly 462,000 meals) to the MVFB. Food insecurity rates are continuing to grow in our region, making these donations more important than ever. The Wentworth CM Club has been participating in Canstruction Boston since 2018.
