What it would look like if Nestlé ruled the world

Elliott Bishop transformed the British city York into a Nestlé-owned dystopia. The architect imagined a city in which employment, governance, housing and nutrition are controlled by its largest corporation.

“The Sweet Proposal: A Cautionary Tale of The Corporate City” explores how a city could function as a private and politically autonomous economic zone in a post-Brexit world. Nestlé already has a very strong presence in the city of York as its Confectionery Headquarters are located there.

The central elements of the self-sufficient factory plan, which Elliott shows in his drawings, are facilities to produce sugar, cocoa and gelatine, high-rise dairy farms and a chocolate cathedral. This “cathedral of capitalism” operates as the main building for the government. It has a tiered design based on Dante’s Inferno, with a cattle slaughterhouse in its base.

Bishop says that his project is inspired by the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and he describes it as a “dystopian corporate utopia”. His detailed drawings of this rather dark vision makes chills run down your spine.

In the thesis accompanying the project, the architect states that “the project provides a service of ethical accountability, holding a mirror up to society using architecture as a medium to philosophically to highlight the loss of control and our true freedoms.”

Elliott Bishop created his corporate dystopia as his last-year project at university. With Britain about to leave the European Union, this architectural vision is as contemporary as can be.

All images by Elliott Bishop.