Langlands & Bell and Infinite Loop. Decoding the futuristic architecture of internet giants

Since the 1980s Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell, through film and video, digital media projects, sculpture, installation, prints, and architecture, have decoded the structures of different types of buildings, from the past as well as the present, from our own society and from other cultures, including, The House of Osama Bin Laden (2003), their Turner Prize nomination work made while they were official war artists investigating The Aftermath of 9/11 and the War in Afghanistan.

Infinite Loop, which takes its name from the address of the new Apple HQ at Cupertino in California, was an exhibition of new work by British artist duo Langlands & Bell, depicting the futuristic architecture of 21st century global internet giants. Infinite Loop has been, until this moment, the largest exhibition held by Langlands & Bell in the UK

The work of Langlands & Bell is focused on a new generation of architecture, including the new headquarters of Apple, The Gates Foundation and Facebook, and investigates how these structures convey notions of power and human interaction in the 21st century.

Langlands & Bell turn their attention to the biggest and most successful companies in the world. Over the past five years, using the internet, Langlands & Bell have researched and made models of buildings as they were being built; The Gates Foundation, Seattle; IBM, Beijing; and Nvidia, Apple and Facebook, all situated in California.

The work includes twenty four editioned prints, presented in different colour variations, which illustrate futuristic models of the buildings as if they are floating in space. Infinite Loop (2016), which is also the title of four new prints, depicts the Apple headquarters isolated from its surroundings and turned on its side, shown at various points in rotation. Nicknamed ‘the space ship’ by Apple employees, the building has been designed by Foster and Partners. The architecture portrayed in Gates Foundation (Seattle), (2016), was designed by architects NBBJ, who were inspired by a map of the globe illustrating the pathways of world commerce and migration. Facebook, Menlo Park (2017), a wall sculpture which depicts the company’s interior, explores Facebook’s new ‘campus’ headquarters. Designed by Frank Gehry, it is the single largest room in the world with a half-mile walking loop, enabling free movement of 2,800 employees.

This body of prints and wall sculptures reflects the power and influence of 21st century global internet giants through the very design of their headquarter buildings, and the coded systems of mass-communication they use to negotiate a fast changing technological world.