For the past two years, I have run the Gator TPED Swamp Thrills Theme Park Design Competition, starting as its founding lead in 2019. However, this year, I had the opportunity to take a step back, hand over the reigns, and, best of all, compete!
My team consisted of Mark Lawrence, Kris Robinson, and Liam Scott (my brother), all veterans of either the Swamp Thrills committee or former competitors. Though we were all engineering majors, our hobbies are what drove the diversity of the team; Liam is a musician, I am an artist, Kris is a chef, and Mark is a technology geek. Thus, we decided to take on a challenge and compete in this year's non-technical prompt, designing a themed restaurant.
The creative prompt for this year was to design an immersive and innovative space-themed restaurant. The design required a live performance element, ADA considerations, at least five fleshed-out menu items, and a fully-themed building.
Our core idea was to flip the traditional alien restaurant on its head: rather than having guests be human visitors to an alien world, they would instead be aliens dining at a naively human-themed establishment. We also wanted to stray away from the common 60s Googie style commonly seen in space-themed environments, so we took inspiration from the awful, gaudy designs of post-Original Series Star Trek and pushed aliens into the 70s.
For the full story, check out our award winning pitch video:
My role on the team was concept generation, story, and concept art/renderings. I have included some of my work below.
Ground Plan
Concept Art
Final Renders
Overall, I am incredibly proud of the final outcome of this project. I could not have asked for a better team, and I hope to work on more themed restaurants in the future. I think I have found a new passion! Thank you so much to the Swamp Thrills team and our guest judges for putting on a great competition.
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