Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1538080
2 0 P E R S P E C T I V E J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 2 5 I ultimately came up with an elaborate too-long punch list of ingredients for the project's "Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center" emergency department, making sure not to include advancements post-COVID (such as negative pressure rooms) as the most recent renovation of the main emergency department would be placed around the year 2010. I would check and cross-check that list endlessly. It was my bible. I also included in the checklist many specific cinematic visions from my own mind that I wanted to realize in the design. One I remember was a long, sad, straight shot to an exhausted doctor on a set of stairs. That image evolved into a clear path seeing a historical stairwell through double doors into the main emergency department. Another was born out of my very first conversation with Noah Wyle. We bonded over this idea of a discordant, incongruously happy mural that would emotionally trigger his character. In the end, that image would become the cartoon animal mural in the pedes room. The first concept layouts became unwieldy to revise in SketchUp with all my requirements, so my amazing collaborators, Josh Lusby (Art Director) and Dean Wolcott (Set Designer), and I temporarily abandoned digital design to expedite an old-fashioned brainstorming design session. We extracted bite-sized model components from the comprehensive checklist. Then we cut them all individually out of paper and played with them on a blank stage plan. This might sound archaic, but, in this circumstance, it was viscerally satisfying and fun. We had stacks and stacks of paper elements—pieces that all had to fit in our finished puzzle. We did innumerable renditions, pushing and pulling pieces into position, flipping them upside down and backward, always grounding them in the necessities of genuine emergency department ergonomics, all while addictively eating—for God knows what reason—every kind of lollipop we could get our hands on. Many revisions functioned fine, but none had magic. A. EARLY CONCEPT PAPER CUTOUT GROUND PLAN IN PROGRESS. B. STAGE 22 WHITE MODEL USED TO TRACK HUNDREDS OF CHARACTERS FROM EPISODE TO EPISODE FOR CRITICAL CONTINUITY. MODEL BY DEAN WOLCOTT. C. STAGE 22 FIRELANE- TO-FIRELANE MAIN EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT. SKETCHUP MODEL BY JOSH LUSBY AND DEAN WOLCOTT. A C B