The sterile, mid-century modern aesthetic of Lumon Industries has become as much a character in the series as Mark Scout himself. The show’s visual identity relies heavily on a unsettling blend of vast, cold corporate architecture and the eerie, snowy suburban sprawl of the fictional town of Kier. Finding the physical locations that match such a specific dystopian vision required the production team to scout hundreds of sites across the Northeastern United States and even into the remote reaches of Canada.

For those who have finished the second season and are left wondering where the boundary between set design and reality lies, the answer is a fascinating mix of historic landmarks, repurposed industrial hubs, and highly complex soundstages.

The Heart of Lumon: Bell Works in Holmdel, New Jersey

The most iconic location in the entire series is undoubtedly the exterior and lobby of Lumon Industries. In the real world, this is Bell Works, formerly the Bell Labs Holmdel Complex in New Jersey. Designed by the legendary architect Eero Saarinen and completed in 1962, the building was once the premier research and development facility for the American telecommunications giant AT&T.

When director Ben Stiller and cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné were looking for a place that felt both futuristic and stuck in the past, Bell Works was the perfect find. The building is a massive glass box, a masterclass in mid-century modernism that spans two million square feet. One of its most striking features is the mirrored glass facade, which reflects the surrounding landscape—a detail the production team used as a metaphor for the dual lives of the characters, the "innies" and the "outies."

Inside, the vast atrium serves as the grand entrance where we often see characters transition into their corporate personas. The production modified parts of the interior to enhance the sense of isolation. For instance, the reflecting pools outside the building were digitally altered to be perfectly symmetrical, adding to the unnatural, curated feel of the Lumon campus. The massive "egg-shaped" parking lot seen from overhead shots is a real feature of the site, contributing to the sense of overwhelming scale that makes individual employees look like ants in a giant machine.

Today, Bell Works has been transformed into a "metroburb"—a hub for offices, shops, and dining. Fans can actually visit the public areas of the building, walking the same halls where Mark S. enters his mysterious workday.

The Severed Floor: York Studios, The Bronx

While the exterior of Lumon is a real historical site, the claustrophobic, labyrinthine hallways of the severed floor where the Macrodata Refinement (MDR) team works are entirely manufactured. These scenes were filmed at York Studios in the Bronx, New York.

Production designer Jeremy Hindle created the MDR office and the endless white hallways to evoke a sense of "unnatural design." Drawing inspiration from the surreal artwork of M.C. Escher and the massive city sets of Jacques Tati’s 1967 film Playtime, the sets were built with movable walls. This allowed the crew to constantly shift the layout, making the environment as disorienting for the actors as it is for the viewers. It is reported that even the cast members frequently got lost while trying to find the office set because every corridor looked identical.

One of the most impressive technical feats of the interior set is the lighting. The ceiling is a grid of uniform, non-directional light, which removes all shadows and sense of time. This reinforces the idea that the "innies" have no connection to the outside world, the weather, or the passage of day and night.

The Perpetuity Wing: Hudson River Museum, Yonkers

In the first season, the MDR team visits the Perpetuity Wing, a museum-like space dedicated to the history of Lumon and the Eagan family. This sequence was filmed at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, New York.

The location was chosen because it seamlessly blends a brutalist concrete structure with a historic 19th-century mansion. The brutalist part of the museum serves as the sterile, underground entrance to the wing. Meanwhile, the replica of Kier Eagan’s original house—which sits inside the wing—is actually the Glenview Historic Home, a Gilded Age building on the museum's grounds. The juxtaposition of the cold, modern concrete and the dark, ornate wood of the Victorian home perfectly captures the cult-like, ancestral worship that defines Lumon’s corporate culture.

Living in Kier: Nyack and Kingston, New York

The town of Kier, where the characters live their "outie" lives, is meant to feel like a company town that hasn't quite moved past the 1970s. To achieve this, the production filmed across several towns in the Hudson Valley and upstate New York.

Baird Creek Manor

Mark Scout’s housing complex, Baird Creek Manor, is a real set of townhouses located at Village Gate in Nyack, New York. The architecture here is strikingly brutalist, featuring sharp angles and dark wooden siding that feels both cozy and oppressive. The layout of the complex, with its narrow paths and identical doors, mirrors the layout of the office hallways, suggesting that even in the outside world, Mark is still trapped in a controlled environment.

Downtown Kier

For the street scenes and general "town" feel, the production utilized Kingston and Beacon, New York. The Kingston-Port Ewen Suspension Bridge was used for the dramatic bridge scene in the first season. Various local storefronts in Kingston were also transformed into the quirky, low-tech businesses seen in the show, such as the Red Owl Collective, which stood in for the Great Doors Company.

Pip’s Bar and Grille

The diner where Mark meets with his sister Devon or interacts with other characters is the Phoenicia Diner in Phoenicia, New York. It is a popular real-world spot that retains a classic, timeless aesthetic that fits the show’s retro-future vibe perfectly.

Season 2 Expansion: New York State Parks and Remote Canada

The second season of the series significantly expanded the world beyond the office and the immediate town of Kier, introducing more natural, albeit still eerie, landscapes.

Woe’s Hollow and the Dieter Eagan National Forest

A major plot point in Season 2 involves the MDR team venturing outside for an "Ortbo" (Outdoor Retreat and Team-Building Occurrence). These scenes were filmed in the Minnewaska State Park Preserve in Ulster County, New York. Specifically, the waterfall seen in the "Woe’s Hollow" sequence is Awosting Falls.

Filming these scenes was an immense logistical challenge. To find locations that felt untouched and vast, the crew had to hike deep into the park, sometimes carrying equipment for miles on foot because vehicles couldn't reach the sites. The production designer noted that they scouted for nearly three weeks across different elevations to find the right "unsettling" natural beauty. The dream sequences involving Irving in the snow were filmed in the Sam’s Point area of the park, where the stark white landscape provided a natural extension of Lumon’s white hallways.

Salt’s Neck: Newfoundland and Labrador

One of the most surprising reveals in the second season was the hometown of Harmony Cobel, a place called Salt’s Neck. To find a location that looked like a rugged, industrial fishing village from a bygone era, the production traveled to Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.

Scenes were shot in the towns of Bonavista, Keels, and Port Union. These locations provided the grey, windswept, and isolated aesthetic needed for Salt's Neck. The weathered wooden buildings and the dramatic coastline of the Atlantic Ocean created a sharp contrast to the sterile perfection of the New Jersey Bell Works location, grounding the history of Lumon in a much harsher reality.

The Goat Room: A Brooklyn Golf Course?

One of the most bizarre recurring elements of the show is the room full of baby goats. In Season 2, we see a more expanded version of this division, colloquially known as "the goat room" or Mammalians Nurturable.

Because of the logistics of working with dozens of live animals, the production couldn't use a standard soundstage for the wide shots. Instead, they built 15-foot high walls and a protective enclosure on the Marine Park Golf Course in Brooklyn. This allowed the goats to have a natural environment while the crew used CGI to transform the golf course into the vast, windowless interior of the severed floor.

The Architecture of Control

What makes the filming locations of this series so effective is that they aren't just backgrounds; they are essential to the storytelling. The choice of mid-century modern and brutalist architecture is deliberate. These styles were born out of a desire for order, efficiency, and progress—ideals that Lumon Industries takes to a terrifying extreme.

By using real locations like Bell Works and the Hudson River Museum, the show taps into a tangible history of American industry and science. These are real places where people once worked to change the world, which adds a layer of weight and believability to the fictional experiments occurring within the show.

For viewers who want to experience the atmosphere for themselves, many of these locations are accessible. Whether it's having lunch at the Phoenicia Diner, visiting the art galleries at the Hudson River Museum, or simply walking through the public atrium at Bell Works, the real-world Kier is hidden in plain sight across the New York metropolitan area.