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Severance is a set design wonderland. From a massive mirrored corporate monolith in New Jersey to a classical train station in upstate New York, the show’s distinctive visual languagewhich has captivated audiences and critics alikerelies on actual places that have been carefully chosen to mess with your head. These aren’t just random pretty buildings. They’re psychological weapons that connect the dots in the same way the writers weave the tapestry of the tale. Severance follows a group of humans that go through a procedure to separate their (outie) real lives from their (innie) corporate bees working for a mysterious industrial conglomerate call Lumon, effectively turning four people (Mark, Helly, Irving, and Dylan) into eight, each with distinct personalities and circumstances. In the same way, the show divides its architecture, confronting an inner corporate hellscape to an outside world that, in its own way, is also its own hellscape. In its second season, Severance has expanded way beyond the creepy white corridors in the severed underground floor of Lumon Industries’s of the first season. The show ventures into a more diverse architectural playground that deepens its exploration of corporate control and our fractured modern psyche. The show’s filming locations now span from New Jersey to upstate New York to Newfoundland, each chosen not just because they look cool on camera, but because of the subliminal messages their architectural features convey. [Image: Apple TV+] The Lumon headquarters The most iconic location in Severance is Lumon Industries’s headquartersa massive, imposing structure that looms over the landscape like some corporate Death Star. In reality, this architectural marvel is the Bell Labs Holmdel Complex (now known as Bell Works) in New Jersey, a building whose real-world significance perfectly aligns with its fictional role. [Image: Apple TV+] All those companies in the ’50s and ’60s, they had so much style, they had the most beautiful spaces, and they were proud of what they were doing, explains Jeremy Hindle, Severances production designer, in an interview with Variety. These corporate spaces are designed to dominate you and make sure that you know the rules. No kidding. That’s exactly what makes Severance so viscerally disturbingand so visually compelling. The architecture isn’t just pretty. It’s predatory. [Photo: Lee Beaumont/Flickr] Designed by renowned architect Eero Saarinen in 1958 and completed in the early 1960s, the Bell Labs complex stands as one of the most significant examples of mid-century corporate modernism in America. Its vast mirrored glass façade earned it the nickname “The World’s Largest Mirror” in architectural circlesa fitting metaphor for a show about reflection and duality. The building spans 2 million square feet with a central open-atrium scheme extending a quarter-mile. ca. 1987 [Photo: Gerard Garcia/Getty Images] When Saarinen designed the complex for Bell Telephone/AT&T researchers, it was conceived as a utopian workplace meant to foster community and collaboration. The central atrium was designed to encourage chance encounters between researchers from different departmentsa physical manifestation of the cross-pollination of ideas, a concept that has been reproduced in many other corporate buildings, like Pixars and, most recently, Legos new HQs.
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E-Commerce
Heathrow Airport, Europe’s busiest, has shut down today, following a fire last night at a nearby electrical substation that caused a major power outage. The closure has disrupted at least 1,350 flights, according to Flightradar24, with some aircraft diverted to alternate airports like Gatwick, Amsterdams Schiphol, and Pariss Charles de Gaulle. What caused the fire? While the cause of the fire is still under investigation, British officials have stated that there is no evidence of foul play. According to the London Fire Brigade, the fire broke out at an electrical substation around 11:20 p.m. on Thursday, involving a transformer containing 25,000 liters of cooling oil “that was fully alight.” The blaze posed a serious risk due to “live high-voltage equipment and the nature of an oil-fueled fire,” the brigade said. Around 70 firefighters responded to the incident. As of the latest update, about 10% of the fire remains burning. The incident left 67,000 homes without power, with 5,000 still affected. Both Heathrow Terminals 2 and 4 are without power. Additionally, around 150 people were evacuated to a rest center for safety. Firefighters and emergency services are continuing to address the situation. “This was a very visible and significant incident, and our firefighters worked tirelessly in challenging conditions to bring the fire under control as swiftly as possible, Pat Goulbourne, assistant commissioner of the London Fire Brigade, said in a statement. What should I do if I have a flight from Heathrow Airport today? Heathrow Airport confirmed that it would remain closed until at least 11:59 p.m. on Friday, warning passengers not to attempt to travel. Authorities have warned of continued disruptions and advised travelers to check with their airlines for updates. The U.K.’s Department for Transport travel guide includes a detailed breakdown of passenger rights covered by law when something goes wrong at a U.K. airport.
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E-Commerce
The blue Twitter bird sign that once was once mounted on the exterior of the San Francisco headquarters of the social media company now known as X sold Thursday at auction for $34,325, failing to reach an estimated bidding price of $40,000. Nicknamed “Larry,” after Boston Celtics star Larry Bird, the 560 lb. logo was one of two displayed on the building before the company rebranded. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a “special government employee” overseeing aggressive cuts to the federal government for President Donald Trump, bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it to X the following year complete with a new, worse logo. The rebrand and new ownership has proven abysmal for the company’s worth. As of last December, the value of X had fallen 72% from what Musk paid for Twitter, according to a valuation from Fidelity, an investment services company. The lost brand equity that’s come from removing the blue bird logo and old name have also proven costly. It’s AP style to refer to the social network on first reference as “X, formerly known as Twitter.” As “X” is both new and less distinctive than “Twitter,” readers may be less familiar with its new single-letter name. The same can be said of the old versus new logos. RR Auction, the auction house that sold the sign, likened the old Twitter logo to the logos of some of America’s most iconic brands. “Although Twitter and its light blue bird have since retired, the symbol remains an icon of tech and social media history, an instantly recognizable emblem in the same league as Nike or Apple Computer,” the auction house says in its listing. It’s a symbol that represented the company “from 2012 to 2023, an 11-year span representing Twitters most popular and influential period.” After buying the social network that would become X, Musk turned the app into a pro-Trump site that amplified his own posts, ended unpaid verification, and became a more accommodating platform for right-leaning news influencers and a less accommodating one for news sites. In a bit of mutual admiration this month, Trump has promoted Musk’s cars on the White House grounds while Musk’s political action committee has run more than $200 million in pro-Trump ads on X. X as it is now is associated with Musk, Trump, DOGE, and MAGA while Twitter is now nostalgia, associated with a previous era when it was publicly owned and public opinion of social media was more positive. The giant sign that just sold is now a piece of history (not to mention one that the new owner is now responsible for paying shipping costs on, per its listing). But it’s also a reminder of a time before social networks felt as politicized and as heavily influenced by their partisan owners as they do today.
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E-Commerce
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