Our design team aimed to understand how the OR worked and how people work in it. How does it need to transition between prepping a patient and operating on one? How do you reconfigure the space so it’s efficient and serves multiple clinical staff, like an anesthesiologist or a neurosurgeon? And finally, how do you store all the equipment when it’s not in use? We started by solving the issue of space. Considering every single piece of inventory Harborview needs to store or relocate, we methodically worked with the Harborview team to establish an equipment plan before we even began to design the space layout. We also addressed communication. To help Harborview’s team work through and understand our designs, we hosted table-top planning charrettes using puzzle pieces to represent team members, equipment, and rooms. By moving things around, we explored how the room will function for different activities. Once we defined 90% of our room layouts, we used 3D virtual reality technology to immerse medical staff in the room and see how it works before agreeing to the design and layout. To fully immerse ourselves in the OR requirements, two of our design team members shadowed the Harborview group to watch a craniotomy procedure. From prepping the patient to the active procedure, our design successfully serves the different functions of the space and adjusts according to the size of the equipment and staff needs.