VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Engineers and architects kicked off their fight to build the best structure out of canned food Sunday morning.
It's the 22nd annual Canstruction competition hosted by and benefiting the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia and the Eastern Shore.
Each team had eight hours to build their structures.
"We are out here participating in the 2023 'Canstruction' competition," competitor Ojima Glover with the team from Mosely Architects told us. "It's basically a competition where different businesses get together and they make different figures out of cans and all the cans that we use are donated to local food banks."
"We are making our own iteration of the Virginia love sign," Glover said. "We thought about how we could make this structurally sound and make this so that it's more 3 dimensional," she continued.
"It's an attempt to defy gravity using canned food," said the Foodbank's Communications Director, David Brandt. "Canstruction brings together architectural and engineering professionals from around the area from different companies."
Brendon Glover - a competitor with the Clark/Nexsen team told us: "We were inspired by the Something in the Water theme for Virginia Beach, and it was as well a play on words."
"So the whale is both a thing in the water, and it's based off of the color scheme for the Something in the Water art by Pharrell Williams," he said.
We're really happy to put such a good foot forward and to really get some food into these drives and just help people," Glover said.
"All told, though, between all these designs we're going to get about 15,000 cans of food," Brandt said.
"We want to make sure we give back," Ojima Glover told us. "We serve the people, so it's really good to be able to do that in this way and also be creative while not just signing a check."
The structures will remain on display in Lynnhaven Mall until March 26.