Thornton Tomasetti receives Jurors Favorite award at CANstruction

NEW YORK — Thornton Tomasetti Inc. received the Juror’s Favorite award at CANstruction, an annual food charity competition. The firm’s New York team won the top prize for CANstruction New York, which was held on Nov. 15 at the World Financial Center in Lower Manhattan.

CANstruction holds annual design and build competitions to construct fantastic, giant sized, structures made entirely of canned food. In each city after the structures are built and the winners declared the creations go on view to the general public as giant art exhibits. At the close of the competitions all of the food used in the structures is donated to local food banks for distribution to community emergency feeding programs.

Thornton Tomasetti’s New York office competed against 24 teams of engineers and architects who built structures using cans of food. Thornton Tomasetti’s entry, “The BabushCAN,” depicted the traditional Russian nesting dolls also known as matryoshka or babushka.

It was sculpted using 3,472 cans of tuna, peaches in pear juice, beef broth, vegetarian beans in tomato sauce, pork and beans in tomato sauce, and pink and green beans. The food will be donated to local food banks after the event exhibition ends Nov. 22 to help feed some 2,000 New Yorkers.

The engineering firm’s New Jersey team, winners of the 2009 Juror’s Favorite award for its rendition of the Thornton Tomasetti-designed Prudential Center, walked away with an Honorable Mention this year for its tribute to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s recent $100 million donation to Newark schools.

“CANstruction is such a great way to give back to the community and I love that the competition is right before Thanksgiving, a time when everyone should have a nutritious meal,” said Claudia Fischmann, captain of Thornton Tomasetti’s 14-member New York team, many of them long-time CANstruction veterans, that captured top honors.

The CANstruction New York exhibition will be on view daily from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., free of charge, at the World Financial Center’s Winter Garden through Nov. 22, 2010. A donation of one can of food is suggested to benefit City Harvest,  https://www.cityharvest.org/.

While both the New York and New Jersey teams came out winners, they accomplished something far more noteworthy — a combined creation of sculptures using 7,000 cans of food to feed some 4,000 people in the Tri-State area.

For more information about Thornton Tomasetti, please visit www.ThorntonTomasetti.com.