Real Los Angeles skyscraper stands in for Vault-Tec headquarters in Fallout series

Sharp-eyed viewers of Fallout season 2 noticed that the sinister Vault-Tec Corporation headquarters looked suspiciously familiar. For good reason – the show's creators used the real (W)rapper Tower in Culver City (essentially Los Angeles), with only minor CGI enhancements.

The (W)rapper Tower is a 17-story, 72-meter office skyscraper designed by architect Eric Owen Moss and completed in 2023. The building's name derives from "wrapper" and references its unique structural system: massive curved steel ribbons wrap around the facade, bending around corners and descending to the foundation. Each "wrapper" measures about 30 centimeters thick and 1.5 meters high, covered with fireproof stucco.

Unlike traditional skyscrapers with columns on a modular grid, (W)rapper is supported by a network of curved ribbons emanating from several geometric centers. An external staircase made from the same materials zigzags up one side of the building, merging with the structural frame. The result is a building some call the perfect villain headquarters for a dystopian, petrol-fueled empire. No wonder it fits so organically into Vault-Tec's aesthetic.

The building features unique seismic resistance. It's the only commercial skyscraper in the US with a seismic isolation system – the steel ribbons rest on an isolated foundation that separates the tower from the ground, allowing it to move safely during earthquakes.

Series fans noted that using a real building with CGI-enhanced backgrounds looks far more convincing than a fully CGI structure. A similar approach was used in The Lord of the Rings, where Isengard's tower was a massive model.

Incidentally, the Enclave base in the Colorado mountains in Fallout is also a real location, while an Army terminal in Brooklyn served as the basis for other scenes.