‘Severance’ Fans Are Swarming Bell Labs, the Lumon HQ Set
The Atrium of Bell Works, in Holmdel, New Jersey (without Lumon’s Set-Robe).
Photo: Mike Van Tassel / Courtesy of Bell Works
“Come with us to sew Lumon,” reads the legend on an enthusiastic Tiktok video. “I am so obsessed #Severance #lumon #BellWorks.” The poster, Sophia Stern, had just filmed in an office park with an illustrious past: Bell Works, the former Research Center Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey, designed by the architect master of the middle of the eero Saarinen middle century. This is the place where cellular-count communications were mainly born and a lot of laser and fiber optic technology have been developed, among others. On Apple TV +, however, it arises for the headquarters of the fictitious industries of Lumon, the disturbing company in the center of Breakup,, Apple TV + business dystopia has struck.
Stern is hardly alone. In addition to the fillet of architecture lovers he has always drawn, Bell Work Breakup Tourists, many of whom are there to post on this online.
This is not the first time that Bell Works has been a defined part. Some films, including 2023 Jules, And a lot of television series, including American horror story And Emergence, filmed there. But nothing put the building in its center as Rupture, Which is intrinsically a show on the experience of the corporate office. (For the uninitiated: Lumon, the company in the show, installs implants in the brain of the employees; their lives of work and employment are divided in two, giving them personalities “innie” and “expulsion”. The obligation has no memories of what is happening inside the building, and the reverse is true for the innie.)
Lumon at night.
Photo: Apple graciousness
Ralph Zucker, The developer who redid the deceased laboratory complex in its current multi-use auto a decade ago, says it was already a destination before Breakup broadcast. “You even come there on a Saturday or Sunday where the offices are mainly closed, the place is assaulted – thousands of people, I am not exaggerating.” But, he adds, with the success of Rupture, “I have heard that we have many more people who come and take photos of themselves in space. We have a whole team working on social networks, and they are flooded. »There is no official tour, so visitors are limited to wandering in public levels of lower level, including the massive central atrium with bridges. Higher levels are not accessible to the public, or, as A visitor said it“They don’t leave the cameras on the cut floor.” When I asked Zucker if he intended to offer an official visit, he refused to say.
The considerably colder version of the complex seen on Apple TV +. Time in the top left: Photo: Apple graciousnessPhoto: Apple graciousnessPhoto: Apple graciousnessPhoto: Apple graciousness
The considerably colder version of the complex seen on Apple TV +. Time in the top left: Photo: Apple graciousnessPhoto: Apple graciousnessPhoto: Co …
The considerably colder version of the complex seen on Apple TV +. Time in the top left: Photo: Apple graciousnessPhoto: Apple graciousnessPhoto: Apple graciousnessPhoto: Apple graciousness
It is not difficult to see why Rupture ‘The producers of S chose Bell Works to represent Lumon. The main building is a triumph of pure geometry and, in particular at a distance, it can be a little prohibited. A scientist who worked there at the time of the Bell Labs described to approach him as follows: “It was still half a million distance when we entered the property and began on the long Esplanade road. The size and space conspired to create a strange optical illusion, in which the road turned out to be much longer, and the much larger building, including one first perceived. The central building is a perfect prism with sharp edges of charcoal glass, surrounded by an elliptical countryside with precision and a large lawn. We can see but not in it. All the more since it was dressed and digitally adjusted to Rupture, It looks freezing. In real life, the details of wood and bronze and touches of color in the decor warm it a little. A yellow carpet with several joyful buildings in the atrium, designed in the manner of Josef Albers, was exchanged for the show and replaced by the Signature Green of Lumon. Renowned Bell Works after its sale in 2013 and renovated by the architect Alexander Gorlin, the old complex now incorporates shopping, eating, and spaces of performance and co-work as well as more conventional offices. The lower floors, where stores and food are located, are open to the public. A representative of Inspired by the development of SomersetZucker’s company, says that it is praised at 98%, which suggests that it does not decrease in the apocalypse of the office.
Zucker is, I rightly think, carefree when I ask to let the building become a Synecdoche for the suction of the corporate soul. “We have always understood that people would realize that it was not, you know, real life,” he said. “Although Breakup Describes the siege as this lifeless spaceless space, in reality, we are literally swarming with life. “He notes that when the atrium was tense to become Lumon, it reminded him of the dark handicapped building when his business had acquired him for the first time. While now,” we glory In the juxtaposition of the two extremes of Lumon against Bell Works. The subject of everyone today is how to bring your people back to work, and our solution is to make it an inspired place where you to want To come like these lines of work and play, are blurred. His only real concern, he adds, was to adapt to minor disturbances of the shooting: the retailers who had to close for a day or two to make room for a shooting team, for example, or the employees temporarily transported through a rear entrance.
Photo: Bell Works graceful
The atrium is significantly less frozen in real life. From left to right: Photo: Bell Works gracefulPhoto: Bell Works graceful
The atrium is significantly less frozen in real life. High: Photo: Bell Works gracefulPhoto: Bell Works graceful
The double nature of the place – its existence at the border between utopia and dystopia – has always been part of the aesthetics. He was opened in 1962 as a product of his time and his very particular place. The original AT&T, alias The Bell system, had an effective and very profitable monopoly on the American phone sector and has often been spoken as a monolithic and faceless entity. Because it was so rich, the company could plunge money into fundamental scientific research and hope that a big leap of fact of money is getting out of it. Bell Laboratories was this research arm, and earlier, he was sits west of Manhattan (in What’s Now Westbeth) then in Murray Hill, New Jersey. The Holmdel building was the next step, a brilliant and impeccable prism intended to contain thousands of scientists in a splendid silent isolation. Saarinen has placed the laboratories around the perimeter, giving almost everyone a beautiful view of the surrounding artistic landscape, and has run long corridors around an internal atrium, theorizing that they would promote coherent fortuitous encounters that led to a cross -pollinated thought. The balustrades had ashtrays built every 20 feet, from an idea that walking, speech and smoking were good for the formation of ideas.
It turned out that the building was a little too perfect and clean for that. The quote that I quoted above on the building approach comes to us via Jon Gertner, whose excellent book The Ideas Factory tell the story of Bell Labs. He said that, from the first day, some scientists who worked there found its own formality compared to its more gemütlich predecessors – the Murray Hill complex and a shabby wooden laboratory on the Holmdel site which had been shaved for the Saarinen building. In his interviews with scientists, he said: “I could discern a certain love and a certain affection for the Murray Hill laboratory and very mixed feelings about Holmdel Lab – cold modernism. It was the dream of an architect, and I’m not sure it was the dream of a scientist. But, it is quick to add, some surely loved it better than others, and its vision, at least, was supposed to be unlimited, even if the world had limits to mind: “It was a monument that was designed for an expanding company that invents the future. And I guess when it was planned and designed at the end of the 1950s, you know, you can watch it and say that the reign of Bell Labs was going to continue again and again – you could somehow see in the future and that it would be its epicenter. “It began to fade with the At& T antitrust break in 1984 and, more generally, in a broad change since then among American companies, far from fundamental research towards the development of more targeted products.” Not only had a lot of money, but they had a kind of confidence that they could work on projects or technologies for decades without having to justify them in a five -year quarterly report. ” They had gone, you know, there are really no societies now that could do it – I mean, Google has been trying for some time with Google X, but who will take a risk on fundamental science? “Lumon wouldn’t do it, or at least wouldn’t tell you if.
