DPR Construction partnered with Gensler, Pivot Interiors, and Ulloa Elementary School to participate in the 30th anniversary of the Leap Sand Castle Contest on a warm and sunny day at Ocean Beach in San Francisco.

But things weren’t always so bright. Just five days prior to the event’s original date, Leap was forced to indefinitely postpone the contest due to the government shutdown. But just like #SFBatKid who saved the day at the last minute, the government reopened and Leap was able to reschedule for one month later.

During the months of September and October, Andrea Walker and I joined forces with a few designers from Gensler to visit Mr. Lee’s fifth grade classroom and teach the kids about building. Over the course of two months, the class learned how to turn an idea into a physical structure.

With this year’s theme of “Masterpieces in Sand,” the students chose their favorite masterpieces and learned how to draw them. The following week, we brought in clay and they figured out how to turn a 2D drawing into a 3D object. Finally, we picked a few of our favorites and combined them into this year’s sand castle design.

By taking a literal spin on the theme, we chose four famous artistic, musical, and architectural masterpieces, and placed each one on a puzzle piece.

Our final design ended up including “Starry Night” by Van Gogh, the Sphinx and Great Pyramids, the Coliseum, and a piano for Mozart.

Rather than giving out an award to every team as they’ve done in the past, Leap changed things up and only gave out four awards this year… and our DPR/Gensler/Pivot team is proud to have won the prize for “Best T-Shirt.”

Photos Courtesy of Andrea Walker

Huge thanks to everyone who joined us!

We’re already looking forward to 2014 and hope you can join us for next year’s event.