packaging as content

November 18, 2008

Bean Can

Photo from Rooneg’ Flickr Photostream from a 2007 “Canstruction” event in Chicago.

Canstruction is a charity competition (held in various cities) in which local architectects and designers build sculptural structures out of full cans of food. The sculptures are subsequently dismantled and the canned food is then distributed to local food banks and pantries.

Besides the pointillist pleasures[1] of seeing large things made from separate small pieces, I like the direct logic of making the food itself the star of these events. Some of the sculptures are bit fanciful for my tastes, but I really like this “bean of cans” made from cans of beans. (It would be nice if supermarkets could arrange similar displays to communicate the contents of their own canned good stacks.) I also appreciate how competing brands of beans are seen here working together, as one, to form a single huge sculptural bean.

(Another Canstruction sculpture that I approve of, after the jump…)

Cross-referential packaging: bottles made from cans.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Footnoted Digression:

1. For my money, the penultimate example of this type of packaging pointillism is Chris Jordan’s 2007 “Cans Seurat.”

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