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The short answer: the pastel maze in Squid Game is widely compared with Ricardo Bofill’s La Muralla Roja in Calpe, Spain, but the building is reported as a design influence—not a confirmed filming location. By contrast, La Fábrica, Bofill’s converted cement factory near Barcelona, was an actual location for Westworld season 3. Both buildings show why Bofill’s architecture works so powerfully on screen: it turns circulation, color, scale and industrial structure into drama.
Who designed the buildings associated with Squid Game and Westworld?
Ricardo Bofill was a Barcelona-born architect whose projects often blur the boundary between architecture and scenography. Rather than treating buildings as neutral containers, he used monumental stairs, repeated arches, courtyards, vivid color and unexpected juxtapositions to choreograph how people move and feel through space.
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That approach explains the different screen relationships of La Muralla Roja and La Fábrica. One is a residential complex whose geometry is reported to have influenced a television set. The other is a former industrial plant that Bofill converted into his own home and studio and that productions have filmed inside.
In a 2020 interview quoted by Architectural Digest, Bofill said, “The constant source of pleasure is space.” He expanded the idea this way: “In the same way there is a pleasure for music, for sound, for vision, there is a pleasure for touch, and there is a pleasure for space.” Those comments are useful context for buildings that make movement and perception feel almost theatrical.
La Muralla Roja and the Squid Game staircase
A real building in Calpe
La Muralla Roja is a residential complex in Calpe, on Spain’s Alicante coast. Architectural Digest dates the project to 1968–73. Its exterior is associated with intense pinks and reds, while other surfaces shift through blues, violets and related tones. The complex is made from interlocking volumes rather than a simple block, with stairways, narrow passages, terraces and courtyards connecting levels.
Euronews reports that the development contains 50 private flats, along with connected streets and courtyards that can feel like a self-contained maze. The circulation is not merely a route from a front door to a lift: stairs turn corners, reveal new color fields and repeatedly redirect a visitor’s view. That is the quality viewers recognize in the pastel staircase sequence in Squid Game.
Influence, not a confirmed location
Coverage from Architectural Digest and ArchDaily describes La Muralla Roja as a visual reference for the show’s maze-like hallway. ArchDaily notes the show’s vertical passage in pastel green, blue and pink, linking spaces across levels while disorienting contestants and viewers. The resemblance is strong enough that the building is often described as the real-world inspiration for the staircase.
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That wording needs a qualification. Euronews says inspiration from buildings such as La Muralla Roja has been reported, but that official confirmation from the show’s creators is lacking. La Muralla Roja should therefore not be presented as a Squid Game filming location. The safest description is that the set appears to draw on, or is widely compared with, Bofill’s design.
Why the comparison is so persuasive
The visual parallel is not just a matter of matching paint colors. Both spaces use vertical circulation as the main subject. Stairs cross and recross one another, levels are difficult to read at a glance, and each landing offers a framed view of another route. In a conventional apartment building, circulation is background infrastructure. In La Muralla Roja and the Squid Game set, it becomes the architecture’s dominant image.
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ArchDaily identifies M.C. Escher as another visual reference for the set. That matters because it prevents an overly simple reading in which every element is attributed to Bofill. The show’s production design combines several precedents; La Muralla Roja is one particularly close architectural parallel.
La Fábrica: the Westworld season 3 location
From cement plant to home and studio
La Fábrica began as a cement factory. In 1975, Bofill converted the industrial complex into a 32,000-square-foot home and studio, according to Architectural Digest. The result preserves the raw evidence of manufacturing—large volumes, weathered surfaces and infrastructural scale—while introducing gardens, work areas, living spaces and carefully composed openings.
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Where La Muralla Roja is known for colored residential geometry, La Fábrica gets its force from transformation. Kilns, silos and concrete structures that once supported industrial production become domestic and creative spaces. The old factory does not disappear beneath a clean renovation; its mass and scars remain part of the experience.
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Westworld season 3 used La Fábrica as a filming location. The production’s set designer described the sequence’s look as “industrial-meets-postmodern-Gothic,” a phrase reported by Architectural Digest. The description captures the tension between the site’s industrial remnants and Bofill’s monumental interventions: the architecture can feel ancient and futuristic, abandoned and highly designed at the same time.
La Fábrica also served as a key location in the 2019 film Paradise Hills. Its cinematic value comes from the fact that it is not a neutral soundstage. Existing columns, voids, rough textures and unusual proportions give a camera immediate atmosphere and provide actors with a legible environment to move through.
How the two buildings create different screen effects
Both projects make movement visible, but they produce opposite kinds of tension. La Muralla Roja compresses a residential neighborhood into a puzzle of color and stairs. La Fábrica expands an industrial shell into a monumental interior landscape. The following comparison separates what is documented from what is interpretive.
| Building | Original and current character | Screen relationship | Dominant visual effect | Visitor practicality |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| La Muralla Roja, Calpe | Residential complex designed in 1968–73; reported to contain 50 private flats | Reported design influence for the Squid Game maze; not confirmed as a filming location | Interconnected stairs, courtyards and saturated colors create a labyrinthine reading of space | Privately owned, with limited public access reported by Euronews |
| La Fábrica | Former cement factory converted by Bofill in 1975 into a 32,000-square-foot home and studio | Filming location for Westworld season 3; also used in Paradise Hills | Industrial structure combined with monumental, postmodern and Gothic-leaning forms | Current visitor terms are not established here; access should be checked directly |
Why Bofill’s architecture translates so well to film
Circulation becomes narrative
In both projects, a journey through the building can carry more meaning than a static façade. A staircase can delay arrival, conceal another character, or force a decision about which direction to take. Repeated landings and framed views create natural cuts and reveals for cinematography.
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Scale makes people look vulnerable
Bofill’s spaces often enlarge the relationship between an individual and the surrounding structure. A person crossing a vast industrial bay at La Fábrica reads as small against the building’s mass. At La Muralla Roja, the opposite strategy applies: tight passages and stacked stairs limit sightlines and make the body acutely aware of walls, turns and elevation changes.
Color and texture carry mood without exposition
The colored surfaces of La Muralla Roja can signal playfulness, danger or disorientation without dialogue. La Fábrica’s concrete, dust and heavy structural elements establish a harsher register immediately. Film and television can therefore use the architecture as emotional information rather than explaining every mood through music or conversation.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Les Espaces d’Abraxas extends the screen connection
Bofill’s relationship with cinema is not limited to the two productions most often discussed alongside his work. Architectural Digest identifies Les Espaces d’Abraxas, a housing development in Noisy-le-Grand outside Paris, as a location in the 1985 film Brazil and in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2.
Les Espaces d’Abraxas demonstrates another side of his cinematic vocabulary: monumental housing arranged almost like a theatrical set. Its large-scale forms can suggest authoritarian order, fantasy or dystopia depending on how a production frames them. The same architectural fact—a housing complex designed around dramatic collective spaces—can support very different stories.
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La Muralla Roja is privately owned, so it is not an ordinary public attraction. Euronews reports that only one flat is open to the public and mentions the possibility of renting a flat, but it does not establish current availability, booking terms or a standing tour program. Those details can change and should be confirmed before travel.
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What to verify before planning a visit
- Whether any apartment, tour or short-term rental is currently available for your dates.
- Whether access is limited to registered guests or residents.
- Which areas, if any, may be photographed or visited beyond the accommodation itself.
- Check-in requirements, local rules and cancellation terms supplied by the current owner or operator.
- Whether construction, maintenance or resident privacy restrictions affect access to the stairways and courtyards.
Calpe is on the Alicante coast, but being in the same town does not guarantee entry to the complex. Treat the site as a functioning residential property, not a theme-park recreation of the Squid Game set. Do not enter secured areas or disturb residents for photographs.
What to expect at La Fábrica
La Fábrica is Bofill’s private home and studio as well as a former industrial site. The sources documenting its use in Westworld and Paradise Hills do not establish current public visiting hours, tours or booking arrangements. Anyone hoping to see it should seek permission through an official channel rather than assuming that a film location is open to visitors.
The distinction is important for both buildings. A recognizable image online can make a private project appear publicly accessible, while filming credits do not automatically create a permanent visitor program. Confirm present-day terms before making a journey, and rely on the property’s own instructions for photography and access.
How to read Bofill’s work beyond the references
It is tempting to reduce La Muralla Roja to its resemblance to Squid Game or La Fábrica to its appearance in Westworld. Both readings miss what the buildings were designed to do before cameras arrived. La Muralla Roja is housing whose circulation, courtyards and color organize everyday life. La Fábrica is a sustained conversion of industrial infrastructure into a place for living and working.
Bofill’s own explanation is more philosophical. In the 2020 interview cited by Architectural Digest, he said, “One of the reasons I have done architecture is to face the futility of life.” The statement helps explain why his projects can feel simultaneously playful and solemn. Their geometry offers pleasure, but their scale and repetition also make viewers conscious of time, labor, decay and the limits of individual control.
That combination is what filmmakers find valuable. A Bofill building arrives with its own choreography, palette and emotional pressure. Productions can borrow those qualities without rebuilding an entire world from scratch—and, in the case of Squid Game, can translate them into a set that evokes the architecture without claiming to be the original place.
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