Detention Class
Armenian Street Party, 2017

In March 2017, I was commissioned by The Substation to design puzzles for Detention Class, an outdoor pop-up installation celebrating “creativity and playfulness, the two things that might have landed you in detention back in school.”
The installation was part escape room and part immersive theater. Puzzle-inclined visitors decoded ciphers and cracked locks to break into the teacher’s desk, where a treasure trove of chewing gum awaited them. Others played trashcan basketball and shot the breeze with the resident delinquents, played by Shaiful Risan and his band of punks.
Detention Class ran for two nights, over the course of the 2017 Armenian Street Party.


Left: Shaiful Risan preps for the next set of visitors. Right: the tongue-in-cheek inscription on the outside of the installation.