Severance is a psychological thriller that explores the complete separation between work and personal life through a medical procedure called “severance.” Employees at Lumon Industries have their memories split their work selves have no memory of their outside lives, and vice versa. The show’s production design, led by Jeremy Hindle, features brutalist architecture, sterile white corridors, and eerily uniform office spaces that feel both retro and futuristic.

For our Museum of the Home project exploring 2056 housing, Severance’s visual language became essential. The show demonstrates how institutional spaces can feel simultaneously efficient and deeply unsettling. The standardized desks, identical hallways, and complete lack of personalization informed our design of temporary occupancy units where surveillance is normalized and home becomes a processing point rather than a dwelling. The series asks whether optimization and control can be disguised as care, the exact question at the heart of our world.