Cun Panda designs escape room with tree at its centre
Chinese studio Cun Panda has created a flexible space for immersive game company Qian Hu Zhi Wu in Xiamen, China, that features a silver-foil-clad tree, acrylic seats and mirror installations.
The local game company runs 14 escape rooms in China. Cun Panda’s design for its latest space measures 330 square metres and was designed with a focus on flexibility to enable a number of gaming narrations to take place.
“We aim to create a space that can tell stories,” the studio said. “The design injects extraordinary imagination and creativity into the space that integrates art and immersive experience.”
At the entrance of the space, a giant tree made of resin and covered in silver foil stretches through the ceiling to form the centre piece of the space. Added light installations were designed to look like satellites and planets circling the tree, giving the piece a futuristic feel.
The tree is surrounded by a series of rock-like formations, which were informed by Stonehenge.
“Stonehenge is taken as the prototype to open the interlaced space leading to the new world and build a dimension door of virtual and real,” explained the studio.
The rock-like sculptures in the space have round holes to create clear sightlines inside the escape room, where the lit-up floor is the main light source and creates a variation of shadows.
Next to the entrance space, a narrow corridor connects the game room with a storage room, dressing room, and makeup areas. Stripes of lights and a mirrors installation on the wall and ceiling were designed to create an infinite sense of space.
In another room, sand-dune shaped seats are supported by transparent acrylic to create a floating effect, revealing green moss and black sand in the otherwise completely white space.
Here, another tree breaks through the wall into the space and connects to the main tree installation. The white wall is lit up by LED lights and printed with shapes of sand dunes.
Cun Panda was founded by Xuanna Cai and Jiacheng Lin in 2019 and has offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Kunming and Xiamen.
Other recent interiors from China include timber and travertine reading room by Atelier Tao+C and Fatface Coffee shop by Baicai, both shortlisted in this year’s Dezeen Awards.
The photography is by Xinghao Liu.