Charlie Benson

This is a generated sketch of the facility. Observe the two stories of interconnected rooms that comprise the escape room arena. Observe also the large glass spectator atrium, which allows the guests to watch the action from above. As the escape rooms begin to flood with water, spectators experience the thrill of watching the water rise towards their feet while the escape room participants swim, dive, and muscle their way to the safety submarines.

In order to model the facility with complete accuracy, I created a trace of a Monterey Bay Canyon topography map in Adobe illustrator. I then exported the vector information as a .DWG.

I brought the vector information from the topography trace into Sketchup Pro and then moved each of the splines according to the topography information. I then created a surface from the splines and projected an image taken from google maps.

This is the result of the projection mapped topography. The facility is modeled to scale.

A view of the deep sea express lift with the facility below.

From the spectator atrium, guests can watch the participants try to escape the flooding rooms right beneath their feet.

Within the escape room, there are multiple different rooms themed as aquatic research labs. These rooms are modular meaning they can be moved and relocated. During the competition, teams can strategically move and reconnect rooms. Some rooms are two stories tall. As the facility continues to flood, participants can access doors on the second story of these rooms by swimming up to them. The water pressure may makes it difficult for them to open doors that are completely submerged, however.

This image demonstrates what a two-story room might look like half-flooded.

The goal of each team is to make it to the escape subs before their point of access is totally blocked by water.