[TUHS] Step Into the Real-Life Lumon Industries, the Breakout Star of ‘Severance’

[TUHS] Step Into the Real-Life Lumon Industries, the Breakout Star of ‘Severance’

[Rich Salz]

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Gift article about Holmdel facility...

Bell Works, the setting of the hit serial for Apple TV+, is now a tourist
attraction, drawing fans to the architectural wonder.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/realestate/severance-lumon-industries-building-bell-labs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2U4.9nGx.iMzMqZbSep6U&smid=em-share
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/realestate/severance-lumon-industries-building-bell-labs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2U4.9nGx.iMzMqZbSep6U&smid=em-share__;!!GjvTz_vk!WVYRBWxI8-AMdi4IgwKAQ33t51B5oNGskvmf1M0lSzqdjQVDbma_zzRSMo8vjBRFhntpWYGLZAfnvbA$>

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[TUHS] Re: Step Into the Real-Life Lumon Industries, the Breakout Star of ‘Severance’

[Henry Bent]

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On Sat, 8 Mar 2025 at 10:40, Rich Salz <rich.salz@gmail.com> wrote:

> Gift article about Holmdel facility...
>
> Bell Works, the setting of the hit serial for Apple TV+, is now a tourist
> attraction, drawing fans to the architectural wonder.
>
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/realestate/severance-lumon-industries-building-bell-labs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2U4.9nGx.iMzMqZbSep6U&smid=em-share
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/realestate/severance-lumon-industries-building-bell-labs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2U4.9nGx.iMzMqZbSep6U&smid=em-share__;!!GjvTz_vk!WVYRBWxI8-AMdi4IgwKAQ33t51B5oNGskvmf1M0lSzqdjQVDbma_zzRSMo8vjBRFhntpWYGLZAfnvbA$>
>

Thank you for sharing this. It's so nice to know that the space has
continued to be used productively.  Crawford Hill, where my father worked,
had a longer and more drawn out end but it looks like everything has worked
out positively and it's going to be a park.

-Henry

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[TUHS] Re: Step Into the Real-Life Lumon Industries, the Breakout Star of ‘Severance’

[Rob Pike]

As someone who worked there occasionally, I can say that it's an
amazing building but from a workplace perspective full of
architectural ideas that simply do not work in practice. No office has
a window - the outer walkways take all the windows, and all the
offices face a transverse corridor. (In a later ridiculously expensive
expansion for a building Saarinen said could never be expanded, they
gave the president's office a window on the end. You might have seen
it in the show.) Only artificial light therefore.The huge central
atrium is cool but of course its floor was soon filled with cubicles,
ruining the effect and eventually requiring a netting over it to stop
people throwing things on the workers below. And so on. Great work
happened there but the building, externally at least a straightened TJ
Watson, was a failure in my amateur opinion.

What a dreary workplace it was.

But the approach is nice, at least until the geese took over and
became serious menaces to arrivals.

It's a fitting locale for the show. No use of the geese though. Maybe
they've moved on.

I will say that with that (I think) opening shot of series of the
water tower, I shrieked.

-rob

On Sun, Mar 9, 2025 at 2:47 AM Rich Salz <rich.salz@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Gift article about Holmdel facility...
>
> Bell Works, the setting of the hit serial for Apple TV+, is now a tourist attraction, drawing fans to the architectural wonder.
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/realestate/severance-lumon-industries-building-bell-labs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2U4.9nGx.iMzMqZbSep6U&smid=em-share

[TUHS] Re: Step Into the Real-Life Lumon Industries, the Breakout Star of ‘Severance’

[Peter Weinberger (温博格) via TUHS]

Rob is overly generous about the space. But great work did happen there.

On Sat, Mar 8, 2025 at 4:08 PM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> As someone who worked there occasionally, I can say that it's an
> amazing building but from a workplace perspective full of
> architectural ideas that simply do not work in practice. No office has
> a window - the outer walkways take all the windows, and all the
> offices face a transverse corridor. (In a later ridiculously expensive
> expansion for a building Saarinen said could never be expanded, they
> gave the president's office a window on the end. You might have seen
> it in the show.) Only artificial light therefore.The huge central
> atrium is cool but of course its floor was soon filled with cubicles,
> ruining the effect and eventually requiring a netting over it to stop
> people throwing things on the workers below. And so on. Great work
> happened there but the building, externally at least a straightened TJ
> Watson, was a failure in my amateur opinion.
>
> What a dreary workplace it was.
>
> But the approach is nice, at least until the geese took over and
> became serious menaces to arrivals.
>
> It's a fitting locale for the show. No use of the geese though. Maybe
> they've moved on.
>
> I will say that with that (I think) opening shot of series of the
> water tower, I shrieked.
>
> -rob
>
> On Sun, Mar 9, 2025 at 2:47 AM Rich Salz <rich.salz@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Gift article about Holmdel facility...
> >
> > Bell Works, the setting of the hit serial for Apple TV+, is now a tourist attraction, drawing fans to the architectural wonder.
> >
> > https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/realestate/severance-lumon-industries-building-bell-labs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2U4.9nGx.iMzMqZbSep6U&smid=em-share

[TUHS] Re: Step Into the Real-Life Lumon Industries, the Breakout Star of ‘Severance’

[Jon Steinhart]

Rob Pike writes:
> As someone who worked there occasionally, I can say that it's an
> amazing building but from a workplace perspective full of
> architectural ideas that simply do not work in practice. No office has
> a window - the outer walkways take all the windows, and all the
> offices face a transverse corridor. (In a later ridiculously expensive
> expansion for a building Saarinen said could never be expanded, they
> gave the president's office a window on the end. You might have seen
> it in the show.) Only artificial light therefore.The huge central
> atrium is cool but of course its floor was soon filled with cubicles,
> ruining the effect and eventually requiring a netting over it to stop
> people throwing things on the workers below. And so on. Great work
> happened there but the building, externally at least a straightened TJ
> Watson, was a failure in my amateur opinion.
>
> What a dreary workplace it was.
>
> But the approach is nice, at least until the geese took over and
> became serious menaces to arrivals.
>
> It's a fitting locale for the show. No use of the geese though. Maybe
> they've moved on.
>
> I will say that with that (I think) opening shot of series of the
> water tower, I shrieked.
>
> -rob

A couple of other Holmdel anecdotes.  I fortunately was at Murray Hill
but occasionally had to go down to Holmdel.

When they first built the building the didn't think to use anti-reflective
glass.  They had to replace it because they were blinding motorists on the
Garden State Parkway every day at sunset.

If you were a latecomer to Holmdel you might wonder why they put so much
money into that huge planter full of artificial plants in the atrium.  It
wasn't always that way.  It used to have real plants and real dirt.  But
Roy, who's last name I can't remember, went up to the top floor balcony
with a bespoke pea shooter and fired pot seeds into the planter which took.
End of dirt.

Unless my aging memory is confusing it with Whippany, I think that one of
the cool things about the site was using the fountains at air conditioning
chillers.

Jon

[TUHS] Re: Step Into the Real-Life Lumon Industries, the Breakout Star of ‘Severance’

[Al Kossow]

On 3/8/25 1:08 PM, Rob Pike wrote:
> As someone who worked there occasionally, I can say that it's an
> amazing building but from a workplace perspective full of
> architectural ideas that simply do not work in practice.

I've heard the same from people working in the Apple Mothership.

[TUHS] Re: Step Into the Real-Life Lumon Industries, the Breakout Star of ‘Severance’

[George Michaelson]

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Steve Deering spoke fondly of the PARC building, it's possible some radical
architectural ideas work? If i recall the sense of his words it was
democratising, communal in spirit.

G

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[TUHS] Re: Step Into the Real-Life Lumon Industries, the Breakout Star of ‘Severance’

[Rob Pike]

I visited PARC a few times and found it salubrious. The culture was
peculiar (not necessarily in a bad way, but I didn't understand yet
how SV worked (literally)), but the building was cosy and the people
seemed happy.

I sometimes wonder whether the reverence we give to architects is fully earned.

-rob

On Sun, Mar 9, 2025 at 10:07 AM George Michaelson <ggm@algebras.org> wrote:
>
> Steve Deering spoke fondly of the PARC building, it's possible some radical architectural ideas work? If i recall the sense of his words it was democratising, communal in spirit.
>
> G

[TUHS] Re: Step Into the Real-Life Lumon Industries, the Breakout Star of ‘Severance’

[ron minnich]

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Part of my 1983 interview trip to Bell Labs (Allentown, Piscataway, MH,
Holmdel, I recall) was at Holmdel, and the engineers there had little good
to say about the building.
My host apologized for the Holmdel offices.

Holmdel, designed by a World Famous Architect, with Big Ideas, reminds me
of an old rule: invariably, the ugliest building on campus is the
architecture college. That certainly is true at UCB, but applies to many
universities I've seen.

ron

p.s.  I was visiting the Empire right before dissolution, and they had to
explain the yellow tapes in Allentown that were going up in the hallways,
marking the future BellCore/ATT boundaries. At that time, 1983, more
semiconductors were made in PA, by Western Electric, than anywhere. The
Bell System had a voracious appetite for hardware.
p.p.s. Nope, didn't go there. One of my hosts gave me good advice: "don't
come here, just go get your PhD." So I did.


On Sat, Mar 8, 2025 at 1:22 PM Peter Weinberger (温博格) via TUHS <
tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:

> Rob is overly generous about the space. But great work did happen there.
>
> On Sat, Mar 8, 2025 at 4:08 PM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > As someone who worked there occasionally, I can say that it's an
> > amazing building but from a workplace perspective full of
> > architectural ideas that simply do not work in practice. No office has
> > a window - the outer walkways take all the windows, and all the
> > offices face a transverse corridor. (In a later ridiculously expensive
> > expansion for a building Saarinen said could never be expanded, they
> > gave the president's office a window on the end. You might have seen
> > it in the show.) Only artificial light therefore.The huge central
> > atrium is cool but of course its floor was soon filled with cubicles,
> > ruining the effect and eventually requiring a netting over it to stop
> > people throwing things on the workers below. And so on. Great work
> > happened there but the building, externally at least a straightened TJ
> > Watson, was a failure in my amateur opinion.
> >
> > What a dreary workplace it was.
> >
> > But the approach is nice, at least until the geese took over and
> > became serious menaces to arrivals.
> >
> > It's a fitting locale for the show. No use of the geese though. Maybe
> > they've moved on.
> >
> > I will say that with that (I think) opening shot of series of the
> > water tower, I shrieked.
> >
> > -rob
> >
> > On Sun, Mar 9, 2025 at 2:47 AM Rich Salz <rich.salz@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Gift article about Holmdel facility...
> > >
> > > Bell Works, the setting of the hit serial for Apple TV+, is now a
> tourist attraction, drawing fans to the architectural wonder.
> > >
> > >
> https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/realestate/severance-lumon-industries-building-bell-labs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2U4.9nGx.iMzMqZbSep6U&smid=em-share
>

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[TUHS] Re: Step Into the Real-Life Lumon Industries, the Breakout Star of ‘Severance’

[Charles H Sauer (he/him)]

I really liked working in IBM Building 801, and Saarinen might deserve 
some of the credit, but the people, the semi-rural environment, the 
pleasant bicycle commute 
(https://technologists.com/sauer/songs/swans.html), working from home 
half the time in our 140 year old farm house with view of the Hudson, 
... all probably deserve more of the credit.

I've worked in some other elegant office buildings, e.g., the Dell 
Arboretum Point building in 1989-90, but the best times at Dell were 
after we (development) moved to one-story tilt wall structures in an 
industrial park. Again, it wasn't the building that mattered, but the 
people, the work, working from home, ...

Charlie

On 3/8/2025 6:51 PM, Rob Pike wrote:
> I visited PARC a few times and found it salubrious. The culture was
> peculiar (not necessarily in a bad way, but I didn't understand yet
> how SV worked (literally)), but the building was cosy and the people
> seemed happy.
> 
> I sometimes wonder whether the reverence we give to architects is fully earned.
> 
> -rob
> 
> On Sun, Mar 9, 2025 at 10:07 AM George Michaelson <ggm@algebras.org> wrote:
>>
>> Steve Deering spoke fondly of the PARC building, it's possible some radical architectural ideas work? If i recall the sense of his words it was democratising, communal in spirit.
>>
>> G

-- 
voice: +1.512.784.7526       e-mail: sauer@technologists.com
fax: +1.512.346.5240         Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/
Facebook/Google/LinkedIn/mas.to: CharlesHSauer

[TUHS] Re: Step Into the Real-Life Lumon Industries, the Breakout Star of ???Severance???

[Larry McVoy]

Welp, you made me look up salubrious.  That's a pretty neat word, I had not
seen that one before and I read a lot.  So thanks for that.

I sort of worked for a PARC guy and the word fits what little I know of PARC.

On Sun, Mar 09, 2025 at 11:51:49AM +1100, Rob Pike wrote:
> I visited PARC a few times and found it salubrious. The culture was
> peculiar (not necessarily in a bad way, but I didn't understand yet
> how SV worked (literally)), but the building was cosy and the people
> seemed happy.
> 
> I sometimes wonder whether the reverence we give to architects is fully earned.
> 
> -rob
> 
> On Sun, Mar 9, 2025 at 10:07???AM George Michaelson <ggm@algebras.org> wrote:
> >
> > Steve Deering spoke fondly of the PARC building, it's possible some radical architectural ideas work? If i recall the sense of his words it was democratising, communal in spirit.
> >
> > G

-- 
---
Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

[TUHS] Re: Step Into the Real-Life Lumon Industries, the Breakout Star of ‘Severance’

[Serissa]

> On Mar 8, 2025, at 7:52 PM, Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I visited PARC a few times and found it salubrious. The culture was
> peculiar (not necessarily in a bad way, but I didn't understand yet
> how SV worked (literally)), but the building was cosy and the people
> seemed happy.

I worked in the PARC building as a grad student and later as research staff.  I liked the building, not least because one could bike there from campus or houses in Palo Alto. As for the culture, I think the book "Dealers of Lightning"  is fairly accurate.  In the 70's and 80's there was little connection between PARC and the rest of Silicon Valley.  PARC had lots of contacts and visitors from Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, CMU, Cambridge UK, ETH, and other schools, but not all that much interchange with other SV companies. Connections were stronger with Xerox in LA as they tried to make a go of products.

I was especially fond of the PARC softball leagues and trips to the Goose in Menlo Park.

After a bunch of folks (including me) left to join Digital research labs in Palo Alto, there were still more connections with universities and with Digital back east than with the rest of the valley.  There was little contact with other industrial research except for program committees.

As for the Unix Way (tm) I think the folks at PARC were honestly puzzled, if they thought about it at all.  Most were Tenex sorts of folks, or interested in languages, GUIs, and distributed computing.  Unix was time sharing, and something you did if you didn't have your own computer.

-L

[TUHS] Re: Step Into the Real-Life Lumon Industries, the Breakout Star of ‘Severance’

[Rob Pike]

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>
> As for the Unix Way (tm) I think the folks at PARC were honestly puzzled,
> if they thought about it at all.  Most were Tenex sorts of folks, or
> interested in languages, GUIs, and distributed computing.  Unix was time
> sharing, and something you did if you didn't have your own computer.


I was at PARC in 1984, working with Dan Ingalls. I mentioned I was
surprised that Smalltalk had no concurrency†, that the UI (let alone the
system) was completely single-threaded. Only the window with focus could
execute any code. Dan being Dan, he immediately got to work making a form
of concurrency happen, followed by a delightful orgy of researches playing
with the new toy. I loved it.

Because: sometimes in isolation you miss important things going on in the
outside world.

-rob

† The starting idea for the Blit né Jerq‡ was bringing a UI to Unix that
supported parallel execution, after a demo of the Three Rivers Perqs at
Lucasfilm, an emulation of the Alto, and seeing only missed opportunities.


‡ The name "Jerq" was Lucasfilm's own moniker for the Perq, and we asked
them for permission to use it, which they happily provided.

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[TUHS] Re: Step Into the Real-Life Lumon Industries, the Breakout Star of ‘Severance’

[Bakul Shah via TUHS]

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On Mar 8, 2025, at 6:05 PM, Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I was at PARC in 1984, working with Dan Ingalls. I mentioned I was surprised that Smalltalk had no concurrency†, that the UI (let alone the system) was completely single-threaded. Only the window with focus could execute any code. Dan being Dan, he immediately got to work making a form of concurrency happen, followed by a delightful orgy of researches playing with the new toy. I loved it.
> 
> Because: sometimes in isolation you miss important things going on in the outside world.

Surely they must've read papers on concurrency & were aware of CSP, monitors, the Actor model etc?

A few years ago at a dinner I had asked Don Knuth whether he was going to write any books on parallel algorithms. Alas, I don't recall his exact answer but he didn't seem keen on the idea -- I was a bit surprised but thinking more about it, it made sense. [Still would like to see someone attempt a Knuth style encyclopedic treatment to the subject of concurrent/parallel algorithms!]


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[TUHS] Re: Step Into the Real-Life Lumon Industries, the Breakout Star of ‘Severance’

[Rob Pike]

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I'm sure they knew about that, but had never considered the consequences
for user interfaces.

-rob


On Sun, Mar 9, 2025 at 3:15 PM Bakul Shah <bakul@iitbombay.org> wrote:

> On Mar 8, 2025, at 6:05 PM, Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I was at PARC in 1984, working with Dan Ingalls. I mentioned I was
> surprised that Smalltalk had no concurrency†, that the UI (let alone the
> system) was completely single-threaded. Only the window with focus could
> execute any code. Dan being Dan, he immediately got to work making a form
> of concurrency happen, followed by a delightful orgy of researches playing
> with the new toy. I loved it.
>
> Because: sometimes in isolation you miss important things going on in the
> outside world.
>
>
> Surely they must've read papers on concurrency & were aware of CSP,
> monitors, the Actor model etc?
>
> A few years ago at a dinner I had asked Don Knuth whether he was going to
> write any books on parallel algorithms. Alas, I don't recall his exact
> answer but he didn't seem keen on the idea -- I was a bit surprised but
> thinking more about it, it made sense. [Still would like to see someone
> attempt a Knuth style encyclopedic treatment to the subject of
> concurrent/parallel algorithms!]
>
>

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