The Domed City (Logan's Run) Logan's Run

The domed city is both the film's primary setting and its central antagonist. Every pleasure it offers -- sex on demand through the Circuit, recreational drugs, cosmetic surgery, entertainment -- is the mechanism of its control. Citizens who have everything they want have no reason to question the single condition attached: that they die at thirty. The city's design combines 1970s Texas modernist architecture with MGM soundstage construction and miniature photography to create a sealed world that looks seductive from the inside and claustrophobic from the outside.

Texas modernist architecture saved $3 million by standing in for the 23rd century

Producer Saul David and director Michael Anderson (Logan's Run) scouted locations in Dallas, Houston, and Fort Worth, finding buildings so futuristic they could pass for a city two centuries in the future.

"Speaking architecturally, Texas is apparently several centuries ahead of the rest of the country." -- Saul David, Texas Film Commission (1976)

The key locations:

Dallas Market Center / Apparel Mart: The five-level Great Hall -- 280 feet long, 150 feet wide, 60 feet high -- served as the dome's main public space and The Carousel Sequence (Logan's Run) arena. Its tiered balconies, open sightlines, and modernist concrete provided the city's architectural grammar. Hundreds of Dallas-area extras filled the space. (gov.texas.gov, movie-locations)

Fort Worth Water Gardens: Designed by Philip Johnson and completed only two years before filming, the active pool's terraced water features served as the 23rd-century hydro-galvanic wave power plant. The Water Gardens also appear in the film's climax as the waterfall intake through which Logan and Jessica re-enter the dome (beat 33 of 40 Beats (Logan's Run)). (movie-locations, roadsideamerica)

Pegasus Place (Zale Corporation building): Doubled as Sandman Headquarters, where Logan receives his assignments and is interrogated by the central computer. (movie-locations)

The Oz nightclub on Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway became the "Love Shop" -- the fog-filled pleasure chamber where Logan and Jessica lose Francis during their escape in beat 14. (movie-locations)

Hyatt Regency Houston: Additional futuristic interiors, including corridor and atrium shots. (movie-locations)

These locations saved an estimated $3 million from the production budget. Then-Governor Dolph Briscoe visited the set during filming. (gov.texas.gov)

Nine MGM soundstages housed the most expensive sets the studio had built in a decade

The interior sets at MGM Studios in Culver City occupied nine soundstages, including Stage 15 -- then the largest soundstage in the world. Dale Hennesy's production design built Sandman Headquarters interiors, the New You cosmetic surgery shop, the ice caverns, the Cathedral, and the Old Man's Senate chamber home. The miniature of the domed city exterior was photographed with the Kenworthy Snorkel System, which allowed a probe lens to travel fluidly through the model at low horizon, selling the illusion of a full-scale city. (wikipedia, movie-locations)

The El Segundo sewage plant and Malibu Creek provided the underground and exterior

The El Segundo sewage disposal plant in Los Angeles stood in for the undersea service tunnels through which Logan and Jessica escape in beats 16-17 of 40 Beats (Logan's Run). Malibu Creek State Park provided the rocky wilderness beyond the dome -- the outside world that assaults Logan and Jessica with unfiltered sunlight, wind, and cold. (movie-locations)

The city's design anticipated the enclosed consumer spaces that followed

Michael York (Logan's Run) recognized the dome's prescient resemblance to American shopping malls:

"It pre-figured many things, like the malling of America, these great, giant indoor spaces that were soon anywhere, and plastic surgery on demand." -- Michael York, It Came From Blog (2021)

The observation is structural, not merely visual. The dome provides everything inside and promises nothing exists outside. American enclosed malls made the same implicit argument throughout the 1980s and 1990s: that the interior world is complete, climate-controlled, and sufficient. The dome is the mall taken to its logical endpoint -- a sealed consumer environment where the only thing you cannot buy is time.