If you’re a facility manager and a fan of the show Severance, it’s likely made you a bit itchy. The Lumon Industries headquarters building, which is almost as much a character in the show as the actual characters, is a facility manager’s nightmare! Many of the following reasons are obviously on purpose for the show’s aesthetic and atmospheric “mood.” But they probably still don’t help relieve facility managers’ anxiety. Here are five ways the Lumon Headquarters is an absolute nightmare for facility managers.
The following list contains mild spoilers.
5. Space Inefficiency – The Macrodata Refinement office, with the cluster of four desks in the center of an otherwise empty office space, is just a ridiculously idiotic use of real estate. And that’s just the beginning.
4. So Many Long, Narrow Hallways – So much of the show Severance is shots from behind people walking down long, narrow hallways. There are so many long, narrow hallways! How are these cleaned? This must be a maintenance nightmare. It would take hours!
3. Massive Energy Inefficiency – There were a few scenes in season one as Mark S and Helly G walk down a hallway that seemed to be equipped with motion sensors for the lighting, but for the most part, as the teams are walking back and forth along aforementioned long hallways, the lights are all on and shining extremely brightly. This makes sense for a company called Lumon, but doesn’t make sense for the company’s energy bills!
2. That Lobby, Though – Many years ago, we wrote about the debacle at the State of Illinois Center in downtown Chicago, and its issues with solar heat gain through its fancy windows. Though the weather in Lumon Land is almost always gray and cloudy, we’d have to imagine during summertime, those three to four stories of glass in the lobby create a solar heat gain nightmare!
1. Health and Wellness Is the Opposite – The Wellness Office at Lumon is less wellness and more indoctrination. It’s terrifying! But that’s the point. Speaking of indoctrination, another facet of what would normally fall under a facility manager’s health and wellness initiatives, especially if working on a WELL certification, is Burt’s Optics and Design Office. The art Burt is responsible for hanging in the headquarters is largely corporate propaganda, though. Still Burt would deliver those WELL points!
Greg Zimmerman is senior contributing editor for FacilitiesNet.com and Building Operating Management magazine.
