www.fastcompany.com
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 shows distinctive visual languagewhich has captivated audiences and critics alikerelies on actual places that have been carefully chosen to mess with your head. These arent just random pretty buildings. Theyre 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 Industriess 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 shows 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 headquartersThe most iconic location in Severance is Lumon Industriess 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. Thats exactly what makes Severance so viscerally disturbingand so visually compelling. The architecture isnt just pretty. Its 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 faade earned it the nickname The Worlds 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.Bell Works, ca. 2022. [Photo: Curlyrnd/Wiki Commons]Yet in Severance, this same architecture becomes oppressive and isolating. The cinematography transforms Saarinens idealistic vision into something cold and menacinga very literal visual metaphor of how corporate utopias often become dystopias in practice. As architectural historian Jon Gertner told Curbed, Bell Labs was an idea factory but, in Severance, it became a factory for something far more sinister: the manufacturing of compliant workers through the literal division of consciousness.In Season 2, aerial shots reveal the buildings distinctive shape, which from above resembles a giant goats eyea visual connection to the shows recurring goat imagery and themes of surveillance. The water tower stands as a sentinel, further emphasizing the companys technological dominance over the landscape and its employees lives. Its like the Eye of Sauron, but for corporate America.[Image: Apple TV+]While Bell Works provides the exterior shots, the labyrinthine white hallways of Lumons severed floor were constructed at York Studios in the Bronx. These stark, minimalist corridorswith their fluorescent lighting, white walls, and complete absence of windowscreate a timeless, placeless quality that reinforces the severed employees disconnection from the outside world. Season 2s opening sequence features Mark running through these disorienting corridors, a scene that required weeks of planning and several days to shoot using a high-speed robotic camera called the Bolt. The design deliberately disorients viewers, making it impossible to create a coherent mental map of the spacemirroring the fragmented consciousness of the severed workers themselves. Its architectural gaslighting at its finest.[Image: Apple TV+]This season we also got to see the surreal Mammalians Nurturable Room, where they have the goats. The production team built an enclosed tent on Brooklyns Marine Park Golf Course, with Industrial Light & Magic rendering the walls and ceiling in CGI. This hybrid of physical and digital architecture creates a dreamlike space that exists somewhere between reality and fantasymuch like the severed state itself. The blending of real and virtual elements mirrors the shows exploration of how memory and perception shape our experience of space.The Great Doors factorySeason 2 introduces another corporate space: the Great Doors factory. Its the opposite of Lumon HQs, but no less oppressive. This is where Dylanone of the four protagonistslooks for a new job after being fired from Lumon. He gets interviewed but not hired because he had the severance procedure to split his brains consciousness. Fun fact: Severances creator Dan Erickson was actually working in a door factory when he came up with the idea for the TV series.[Image: Apple TV+]The real location is the Red Owl Collective in the Midtown Arts District, in Kingston, a city in upstate New York. This 10,000-square-foot antique, vintage, and design emporium provides a richly textured industrial backdrop that contrasts with Lumons sterile environment while still conveying themes of labor and production.[Image: Google Maps]What makes these corporate spaces so effective in Severance is how they embody what architect Rem Koolhaas has called junkspaceenvironments designed not for human comfort but for corporate efficiency, where workers become interchangeable parts in a machine. The architecture doesnt just house the corporation; it is the corporation made physicala concrete and glass manifestation of power structures that shape human behavior and identity.[Image: Apple TV+]Brick and mortar split personalitiesIf Lumons corporate architecture represents power and control, the residential spaces in Severance show more intimate themes of identity and memory. Marks and Irvings apartments, filmed at the Village Gate Townhouses in Nyack, NY, and in the Waterfront at the Strand in Kingston, NY, respectively, are also featured in this season. Both represent each of their outies mental states: barren despair for Mark, and dark despair for Irving. Season 2 expands the shows exploration of domestic architecture to visually reinforce the psychological state of characters caught between their innie and outie existences, introducing Dylans residence.In the real world, his familiar middle-class residence is at Kings Landing Condominium on Oxford Lane in Middletown, New Jersey. Whats fascinating about this location is the vision we get from above in one of the episodes. Some see a uterus, others Lumons logo upside down. I see both, perhaps an allegory to one of the shows underlying themes: human reproduction.[Image: Apple TV+]The other side of this coin is the Eagans family residence, the owners of Lumon. Its a massive glass structure visible in aerial shots near the Lumon headquarters, controlling it from afar. Home of the Helly E(gan)the outie of innie Helly Ris truly a dream home. The modernist house embodies a cruel irony: the transparency that the Eagans deny their workers, they enjoy for themselves. They can see out while keeping others from seeing in. The architectural juxtaposition between the workers homes and the Eagan residence visually reinforces the shows themes of class division and power imbalance.[Image: Apple TV+]If you are fascinated by this home and want to know where it is, you are not alone. I spent a few hours researching this one and it doesnt seem to exist in the real world. Like other sets in the show, it appears to have been built as a set and enhanced with digital effects. In the architectural apartheid of Severance, buildings always tell us who has power and who doesnt. The Eagans live in a house where they can see everything, while their employees live in spaces where they can only see what the company allows them to see.[Image: Apple TV+]Public spaces between worldsSeason 2 of Severance ventures beyond the corporate and domestic realms to explore a variety of public spaces that serve as transitional zones between different states of being. These liminal spacestrain stations, parks, gatewaysseem to physically embody the shows central concern with boundaries and thresholds, particularly the boundary between severed and unsevered consciousness.One of Season 2s most architecturally significant new locations is Uticas Union Station, featured in Episode 9, titled The After Hours. Built in 1914 and designed by Allen Stem and Alfred Fellheimerthe same architects behind Grand Central Terminalthis classical train station with its impressive marble pillars provides the backdrop for an emotionally charged scene between Burt and Irving. Its a beautiful space, grand architecture that speaks to an era of transition and movement, making it the perfect setting for a pivotal moment for the characters that resonates with the idea of splitting lives like the severing process does. The classical architecture creates a sense of permanence and history that contrasts with the transient nature of the characters meeting.The production spent approximately $2 million filming at this location for just two days in May 2023, adding fake snow to maintain the wintry Season 2 aesthetic. This transformation of a historical space into a fictional moment is a good example of how Severance uses real architecture as raw material for its psychological landscape.The location also had another less obvious connotation. When the scene ends, Irving takes the 2400RR line, a historical scenic line in the Adirondack Railroad, which begins in Oneida County and ends in the Genesee Counties. If you know anything about cults, those two places should certainly ring several bells, points out one redditor in the Severance subreddit. Mormonism was founded in the Genesee Counties. [] The Oneida Community was a strange highly Puritanical yet also free love (deviant sex encouraging, quasi-communist Christian sect that was founded in Oneida County in the latter half of the 20th century. This clearly connects with Lumon Industriess nature, which has an extremely dark background featuring a mythical origin story, a god-like founder, strange sex and corporate rituals, blind obedience, and child abuse, among other niceties.Some of Season 2s most striking settings were filmed at Minnewaska State Park Preserve in New Yorks Shawangunk Mountains. Used for both the Dieter Eagan National Forest in Episode 4 and the haunting Woes Hollow scenes, these locations leverage natural architecturedramatic cliff views and frozen landscapesto create environments that feel simultaneously beautiful and threatening.The Mohonk Testimonial Gateway in New Paltz, NY, returns in Season 2 as the entrance to the Damona Birthing Retreat. Built in 1908 as the formal entrance to the Mohonk Mountain House resort, this historical gatehouse creates a literal threshold between worldsa perfect architectural metaphor for the shows exploration of divided consciousness. In Episode 9, this gateway serves as the access point to Cabin 5, reinforcing its role as a transitional space between different states of being.Downtown Beacon continues to serve as the fictional town of Kier in Season 2, with the Beacon Building on Main Street functioning as the Hall of Records. The repurposing of this real small-town architecture creates a setting that feels simultaneously familiar and slightly off-kiltera visual strategy that reinforces the shows themes of distorted reality.[Image: Apple TV+]Other transitional spaces include a set prop phone booth constructed in front of a closed car repair shop near Kingstons Wurts Street Bridge, and the shed featured in Season 2, Episode 3 Who Is Alive? positioned below Kingstons Rondout Train Trestle. These constructed elements within existing architectural contexts show how the production designs spaces that connect the severed and unsevered worlds.Season 2 also ventures beyond New York state to the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador for the Salts Neck sequences. These locations portray a run-down, former factory town wounded by the closure of a Lumon production plant. The remote, snowy landscapes contribute to the shows atmosphere of isolation while the abandoned industrial architecture serves as a warning about the consequences of corporate abandonmenta ghost town that represents the ultimate symbol of Lumons disposable view of human labor. Which brings me to the ultimate point: Severance itself, its physical worlds, embodies the ultimate innie-outie dichotomy. A show that is both depressing with glimmers of hope, but ultimately depressing again. Every episode, I wonder if our protagonists would triumph against this techno-capitalists sect (Im sorry, but I get Apple vibes all over, and Im guessing its executives are not into the joke) or disappear into the oblivion of forgetfulness in the innies world and the carcass of mortal decay in the outies world. The answer will probably be both.