By Hannah Lathen/ campus editor

South Campus students in the architectural program competed in CANstruction with their replica of the old Dallas County Courthouse Oct. 16.

CANstruction is an international competition where architectural and engineering firms as well as colleges compete to make a structure made out of cans that will later be donated to hunger relief organizations.

Students decide on a theme and then make the design on a computer. This year, they went with “Old Red,” Dallas’ historic courthouse.

Student Naomi Scott says it may seem easy, but actually building the structure is harder than it looks.

“It’s always fun because you can do it on the computer as much as you want, but everything changes when you’re doing it in real life,” she said. “You have round objects that you’re trying to fit into always a square shape of some variety. So there’s always times where you need extra cans where you didn’t think you did.”

This is South Campus’ 14th year competing, and architecture instructor Arnie Radman says this event not only benefits the community but the students as well.

“The reason I think it’s important is it gives students a sense of responsibility to the community,” he said. “Realizing that they’re, by doing this, they’re building something, and people are becoming aware of what hunger is all about.”

Radman says CANstruction got off to a slow start this year due to a delay in funding.

“We proceeded with the idea that somehow we were going to come up with the money,” he said. “I finally got word just a couple weeks ago that the school was going to give us money, but it was not a guarantee.”

After collecting several donations from firms, TCC picked up the balance.

“It came together, and I knew it would,” Radman said. “It was just a little stressful.”

Julie Meeks, Tarrant County CANstruction co-chair, says the biggest focus of CANstruction is to bring awareness to the problem of hunger in Tarrant County.

“It really is a very serious issue with a lot of families plus also the children,” she said. “This is a great way for architect engineers and construction and colleges that have design classes to be able to do something fun and then actually give back to the community with the cans.”

Tarrant Area Food Bank director of community events Francie Cooper says CANstruction will make a large impact on the 11 counties that it serves.

“We’ll get somewhere between 30,000 to 50,000 pounds of food from this event. That will just make a huge difference for us going into the holiday season,” she said. “We’re really grateful for this event and all the teams that participate.”