“Snorlax the Sleeping PoCANmon,” a structure of cans of tuna fish, designed by engineers and architects at GMS, is on display at Brooklfield Place at the 25th annual Canstruction competition.

Canstruction is an international charity competition where teams of architects, engineers, contractors and the students they mentor, competed this year to design and build giant structures made entirely from cans of food. At the close of the competition all of the food from the New York City competition will be donated to City Harvest.

New York City is joined by over 100 cities across North America and other countries such as Australia and New Zealand who will hold Canstruction Competitions in the coming year. Highlighting the creativity and compassion of top architectural, engineering and construction firms, these astounding structures are helping to change the world – by lifting the spirits of those in need, by raising public awareness, and most importantly, by collecting millions of pounds of food for local food banks.

Snorlax is often referred to as the Sleeping Pokémon, and there’s a good reason for that! This giant loafer spends almost all its time snoozing, getting up for just long enough each day to scoff up a tidy 900 pounds of food. This may seem a lot, but it’s nothing in comparison to what CANstruction can provide.

Snorlax CAN also soar into the air and uses its Body Slam attack, smacking into fighters like a giant wrecking ball. Even though we should “wake up” and fight for what we want, maybe we are sometimes like “wrecking balls” and we should think about the consequences of what we do.

“Snorlax” will be on display at 200 Vesey Street (Brookfield Place) until November 15, 2016.

The GMS team is proud of everyone who collaborated on this effort:

Eugene Kim, Noelia Alvarez, Bolaji Afolabi, Helena Ariza, Mark Beltramello, William Hutch, Jean Laurent, David Kazibwe, Isabel Lorenzo, Georgios Mallios, Alvaro Martinez, Anthony Nicolle, Albert Wong. We would like to especially thank all the partners of Gilsanz Murray Steficek for their support during this year’s Canstruction competition.

City Harvest pioneered food rescue in 1982 and, this year, will collect 55 million pounds of excess food to help feed the nearly 1.4 million New Yorkers struggling to put meals on their tables. Through relationships with farms, restaurants, grocers, and manufacturers, City Harvest collects nutritious food that would otherwise go to waste and delivers it free of charge to 500 soup kitchens, food pantries and other community food programs across the five boroughs. City Harvest takes a long-term approach to hunger relief through its Healthy Neighborhoods initiative. In communities with elevated rates of food insecurity, poverty and diet-related illnesses, City Harvest has developed programs and partnerships to increase the availability of affordable, fresh produce and inspire healthy, budget-conscious meal choices through nutrition education. To learn more about food rescue, hunger relief and Healthy Neighborhoods in New York City, visit cityharvest.org.