The days are getting shorter, the leaves are turning colors, pumpkins in fantastical and unlikely shapes are beginning to appear on people’s porch steps … you know what that means:
It’s Canstruction season in Boston!
This past Saturday, October 3, teams of hopeful builders showed up to the Boston Society of Architects (BSA) space and built some awesome sculptures out of cans.
This year’s theme was “Fictional Worlds.” Nitsch’s entry is “CAN You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street?”
Built out of 3,440 cans of tuna, beans, pumpkins, and mixed vegetables, our sculpture will provide delicious, balanced meals to our neighbors in the Merrimack Valley. As our sculpture description states,
“C” is for “can” and that’s good enough for me!
Our structure is an ode to Sesame Street, which has remained one of the most beloved and enduring worlds in children’s television since the first episode aired on PBS in 1969. Sesame Street is set on a fictional street in New York City packed with Muppets like Oscar the Grouch (left), Grover (center), and Elmo (right), depicted here with the iconic stoop and street sign. (And Elmo’s frenemy Rocco!) Fun fact: when the set of Sesame Street was first designed, the creators referred to Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities for inspiration and insight into the role of urban design in creating an active, welcoming neighborhood.
On Sesame Street, music and mayhem are put to good use: educating preschool-age children about numbers, the ABCs, and the world around them, famously asking, “Who are the people in your neighborhood?”
Where the Sesame Street of real life provides intellectual and emotional sustenance, our Sesame Street provides literal sustenance in the form of tuna, beans, lentils, salmon, chicken, corn, peas, green beans, and tomato. This food will go right to the people in our neighborhood who need it most.
You can vote for People’s Choice Award until October 15! Follow your heart in voting … especially if it leads you back to Sesame Street!
The sculptures will be up in the BSA space at 280-290 Congress Street in Boston, where they can be viewed in person until October 23! Then we will go and “decanstruct” everything, and donate all the cans to the Merrimack Valley Food Bank.
You can watch a timelapse video of Build Day on our YouTube channel, and remember to vote for the People’s Choice Award before October 15!
