The last can was carefully placed on top of our team’s 10-foot tall can art exhibition at 3:10 a.m. at this year’s Canstruction Chicago build night. Although the next morning many of us had sleepy eyes and multiple cups of coffee, our team at Eriksson Engineering Associates, Ltd. (EEA), and our partners from FitzGerald, Power Construction, and ECS Midwest were excited the 5,050-can “CANthedral” finally came to life.

At this year’s ChicagoCAN charity cocktail event and awards reception, the “CANthedral” received the 2018 “Structural Ingenuity” award, marking our fourth consecutive team award, and third in that category.

Canstruction Chicago judges were asked to make the selection based on the sculpture that, “Pushes the limits of gravity and physics to turn a basic can of food into a structure that makes you say, “Wow, how did they do that?”

The can art exhibitions designed by 22 teams of Chicago-area architecture, engineering and construction professionals were on display at the Merchandise Mart for two weeks and were later donated to the Greater Chicago Food Depository.