The Season of Giving
DESIGN BRIEF | December 2019
The Season of Giving
Washington, DC
November and December mark the time for MV+A’s “Season of Giving.” While we contribute to other charities throughout the year, these months truly bring the office together to give back to the Washington Metropolitan Area community. Starting in November on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, MV+A volunteers take part in CANstruction. CANstruction is an international hunger relief charity that organizes companies to contribute to their local city food bank by creating canned food sculptures. CANstruction DC, partnered with the Washington Architectural Foundation (WAF), donates the competition canned goods to the Capital Area Food Bank. MV+A has also been working with DC’s Food Bank this year to design a mobile grocery truck to help their mission to feed the city’s population struggling with hunger and food insecurity.
This is the tenth year that MV+A has participated in CANstruction. Planning for the event begins early in the summer when the year’s theme is announced by WAF. A pizza-fueled brainstorming session determined this year’s response to the “1980’s” theme – an eight-foot tall Smurf House! MV+A’s twenty-two Smurf team members then designed the giant mushroom sculpture in Sketchup, followed by CAD plan templates for all twenty-four levels of cans and a work session to cut the house layers in foam board and plywood. Other volunteers shopped and found cans in all the right sizes and colors to create the final sculpture.
This year’s entry won the prize for Structural Ingenuity, with technical help on our cantilevered mushroom cap from our friends at Therrien Waddell Construction. Most importantly, the final Smurf-tastic house contributed 3,177 cans of tomatoes, peas, peaches, green beans, corn and other shelf-stable food and drink items.
Every December for the past five years, MV+A has also participated in the Salvation Army’s Angel Tree program. This year we were able to sponsor five children (“Angels”) by providing holiday gifts to local families in need of assistance during the holiday season. Once gifts are collected in the office, we fully pack an employee’s car to drive the donations to the Salvation Army Warehouse in Hyattsville, MD. If your office is looking for a way to come together during the holiday season, we highly recommend this program!
From all of us at MV+A Architects, we wish you a happy holiday season and all the best in 2020.
