Severance: Explore Real-Life Locations That Built Lumon's World

11. The Portland Building – Portland, Oregon (The Testing Floor & Archives)

The Portland Building, one of the most controversial examples of postmodern architecture in the U.S., serves as visual inspiration for Lumon’s archives and testing floors. With its brutalist-meets-surrealist design, the Portland Building embodies a feeling of cognitive dissonance—it’s both visually striking and deeply disorienting, much like Lumon’s corporate world. Its blocky, geometric shapes and lack of traditional symmetry create a sense of unease and detachment, making it a fitting inspiration for the show’s cold, maze-like workspaces. This location helps reinforce the feeling that nothing in Lumon is quite real, that the company’s sterile, rigidly controlled interiors are meant to keep employees psychologically off-balance, questioning their own sense of reality.