Chefs at fancy restaurants dress up their dishes all the time, assembling expensive food in artistically arranged stacks, embellished with smears of colorful sauces, edible flowers and the like. It’s a feast for the eyes as well as the taste buds.

But food doesn’t need to be gourmet to serve as a canvas that ties food with aesthetics. For 12 years, architects and building professionals have pooled their creative energies to build engaging, imaginative structures with canned foods for the Canstruction competition at Pearlridge Center. On Saturday, 11 teams used thousands of cans to actualize ideas centered on the theme “Browse a Library of CANstructures.” The teams’ creations will be on display at Pearlridge’s Uptown Center Court through Oct. 14. The donated cans will later make their way to the Hawaii Foodbank.

As a juror at this year’s competition, I gained an appreciation for both the artistry of assembled cans and the marvels of structural design.

Most teams took inspiration from lively characters and storylines in children’s literature. The architectural firm G70, teamed with Nordic PCL Construction, for instance, created a scene from “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” with a tornado spinning under white clouds over an ocean filled with meatballs. The scene’s sophisticated design of more than 4,450 cans of tuna somehow managed to support an umbrella of white “clouds” on a V-shaped tornado funnel, earning the team the Structural Ingenuity award.

The team used numerous brands, all with different colored labels, to create a structure that expressed the dynamic force of a spinning tornado, with lines of colored cans stacked diagonally around the piece to depict swirling.

“We thought this book aligned with the focus of Canstruction: to feed the hungry,” said team captain Elim Ng of G70. “We wanted to build a scene, not just an object. We hope that as people look at the structure, it’s as if they’re going on an adventure on the ocean toward the tornado. We hope they suspend their imagination into the scene.”

Ng said the team found that tuna cans were the best size to work with.

“They were just the right depth. When you start layering the cans, you can push them inward and outward to create shape and depth. You can create more layers than with taller cans. You can do more with shapes,” she said.

The team took several months using a 3-D architectural modeling program to design their work, and spent 3-1/2 hours Saturday to build it on-site.

The winner of the Best Original Design award, meanwhile, produced a structure that was decidedly more adult and art-driven than the rest of the pack. WATG architectural firm used more than 3,000 cans of Spam spread — with the occasional reinforcement of canned chicken — to create a moody bust of 19th-century writer Edgar Allan Poe.

The small size of the Spam spread cans allowed the team to create movement and detail.

“It plays with light and shadow,” said team captain Noe Pegarido. “We tried to do something more sculptural, less literal.”

Because of its singular color scheme, the piece relied solely on form and design. Similarly hued 1/4-inch boards interspersed with Spam spread and chicken cans delivered a contrasting texture to create Poe’s hair.

The mono color provided just the effect the team sought.

“It’s more dramatic,” Pegarido said.

Other winners: Dr. Seuss’ Thing 1 and Thing 2 (Best Use of Labels) and a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly (“The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” Best Meal).

Other structures: Dr. Seuss’ Lorax, the Emerald City (“The Wizard of Oz”), the Magic School Bus, a local interpretation of “Stone Soup,” Curious George, the Cheshire Cat (“Alice in Wonderland”) and a play on the Hogwarts Express (“Harry Potter” series).

Canstruction competitions are held in cities globally, and winning structures go on to compete internationally.