Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1538080
James responded with total enthusiasm. "Let's go for it," he said. That green light kicked off a design phase filled with inspiration—and eventually, a great deal of sweat and panic. My longtime collaborator and dear friend, Supervising Art Director Dave Scott, and I dove into our exploration with the fabulous researcher Sammy Wadsworth. We began with geology, looking at how crystals fracture and grow, how they seem to erupt from rock with chaotic precision. Russell Barnes, my husband and also a Production Designer, suggested I study the way water freezes mid-motion. That led to a series of visual explorations—crashing waves, frozen waterfalls, dynamic spray forms. Then I found it: a black-and-white 1960s photo of ocean spray slamming against a rock, frozen in time. That image became my creative Rosetta Stone. Working with Concept Artists Victor Martinez and Jonathan Bach, we reinterpreted that explosion of motion as glacial geometry. When we presented the design to James, he immediately smiled and said, "That's our Fortress." Exterior design locked. Interior another story. The earliest interior concept was bold: two hundred and forty-two translucent resin crystals, some up to forty feet long, rising from stone flooring and embedded in walls. I wanted them to feel structural and sacred—like a cathedral grown from Kryptonian geology. Legendary construction coordinator Chris Snyder and his team jumped into prototyping with infectious optimism. But optimism has its limits. The first challenge was translucency. Early resin casts were cloudy or opaque. No glow, no life. Then came structural problems: Anything large enough to feel architectural was too heavy to hang safely or too brittle to withstand handling. The 6-foot prototypes were cracking—and the set needed crystals five times that size. Weeks turned into months. At the same time, the Art Department was moving forward with layouts for the interior space. Art Director Alex McCarroll masterfully oversaw D F E