Students help firm build sculpture for SA 'Canstruction' competition

Environmental design students at Texas A&M partnered with a San Antonio design firm to fabricate plates supporting a giant dinosaur sculpture made from canned goods that will eventually provide hunger relief to south Texans as part of a unique annual food drive contest.

The plates, created by students at the college’s [Digital Fabrication Facility] (http://www.arch.tamu.edu/inside/services/digital-fabrication/) at Texas A&M's Riverside campus, provided structural support for an 11-foot tall canned food dinosaur designed by [Overland Partners | Architects] (http://www.overlandpartners.com) for ["Canstruction,"] (http://www.aiasa.org/index.php/canstruction) an annual food drive sponsored by the San Antonio Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

At the competition, teams of architects, engineers, contractors and university students designed and built gigantic structures made from canned food, showcasing the creativity of the design and construction industry. After the competition, the food will be donated to the San Antonio Food Bank.

The Aggie partnership with Overland was initiated during a tour of the award-winning San Antonio architecture firm,  when students Dustin Adler, Ben Wilde, Sam Florance, Josh Cristy, Daniel Kelly and Stephen Renard, met Patrick Winn, an Overland architect who earned an environmental design degree at Texas A&M in 2002.

Winn, a former student employee at the fabrication facility, known by students as the "Architecture Ranch," asked the students to partner with the firm and help produce the plates needed for their dinosaur Canstruction project using the Ranch's computer numerical control (CNC) mill.

The 7 ^th annual Canstruction sculptures are on exhibit at San Antonio’s [North Star Mall] (http://www.northstarmall.com) through Sept. 29. A [video] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzT2h3wH8GY&feature=youtu.be&hd=1) of the students' building the giant "Canosaur" is available on [You Tube] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzT2h3wH8GY&feature=youtu.be&hd=1) .

[Online voting] (https://safoodbank.wufoo.com/forms/canstruction-2012-peoples-choice/) for the best Canstruction sculpture is under way on the event [website.] (https://safoodbank.wufoo.com/forms/canstruction-2012-peoples-choice/)

Overland Partners | Architects, incorporated in 1987, has grown from four friends working on small remodeling projects to more than 50 professionals working on significant public buildings around the world.

[Overland designer ] (https://safoodbank.wufoo.com/forms/canstruction-2012-peoples-choice/) [Robert Shemwell] (http://www.arch.tamu.edu/community/formerstudents/outstanding-alumni/past-honorees/72/) , who earned a Bachelor of Environmental Design degree at Texas A&M in 1982 and is an outstanding alumnus of the College of Architecture, was the lead architect of the team that designed the Bonfire Memorial, hailed as one of the U.S.’ most significant memorials in a 2007 [book] (http://www.amazon.com/Monuments-Americas-History-Art-Memory/dp/1400065828) by architectural historian Judith Dupré.