Fantasy of total Control by Nikki Bell and Ben Langlands

Nikki Bell, left, and Ben Langlands.

  Nikki Bell and Ben Langlands now in their late 50s and early 60s, the provocative pair have been probing the darker side of what they call “strategic architecture” for the past three decades. 

 Constructing immaculate white models of buildings that speak of networks of wider global influence beyond their four walls from the big banks of Frankfurt, to the geometric headquarters of Nato and Unesco, to the sprawling panopticon penitentiaries of the US and international courts of justice.

 They conducted a cool-headed autopsy, peeling back facades and lifting off rooftops, stripping away the envelope and revealing the innards. 

 The artists rarely visit the sites in question nor speak to the architects, but undertake desktop research and download drawings from municipal planning authority websites to build up the required information.

 Langlands & Bell trained in the 1970s, so they prefer scalpels to B-splines. They still construct each model by hand, layering up card and foam-board to form a “two-and-a-half dimensional” relief, before photographing and digitally manipulating the images. 

 Recently they have been drawn to the emphatically geometric headquarters of California’s tech giants because they see an intriguing conflict of representation, a disconnect between symbol and subject.

Langlands & Bell’s work Infinite Loop, Apple campus.

 “Our obsession started when we came across Norman Foster’s plan for the new Apple campus in Cupertino,” says Ben Langlands, gesturing towards an image of  a mile-long closed loop of offices, lined with brushed aluminium and clad with the largest panes of curved glass the world has ever seen. 

 “It is a fantasy of total control,” says Nikki Bell. “It oozes strategy, ambition, globalisation and technology; it so thoroughly embodies what these companies are about,” she adds.

 “It’s a real moment in history,” says Langlands. “Only 20 or 30 years ago, these companies were really quite modest, just starting up and operating out of garages, yet now they are some of the biggest corporations in the world. They seem a little bit self-conscious about building these huge monumental edifices, while claiming to maintain the casual start-up jeans-and-T-shirt culture.”

Facebook Menlo Park 

 The identity crisis is most apparent in the form of Frank Gehry’s gargantuan Facebook building in Menlo Park, a vast corporate HQ that still wants to be an informal garage. Rambling along the highway for 40,000 square metres, it is the biggest single office space in the world. 


 Source: Langlands & Bell: the artists storming Silicon Valley's fortresses