"Its name comes from the ancient city renowned for its great luxury. The club Babylon is also a mythical place where people are forever young, bodies are perfect, and sex is free for almost anyone who enters. To capture this gay Shangri-la, the production team moved from locations around Toronto and finally into their own soundstage to re-create a world of luxury and pleasure.
In the first season, Babylon was a couple of Toronto clubs: The Governemt was used in the pilot and later episodes were filmed in a club known as Fly. But the problems with working on location were many, especially considering the number of scenes set in Babylon throughout the season. The production was always dependent on the club's schedule, and shooting could never run over since the place would have to open for business. The crew also had to work with the space provided no matter what the physical limitations may have been.

Before production began on the second season, a conversation took place about building the club in the studio. However, that studio space was already incredibly tight. But once production designer Ingrid Jurek came up with a plan to make the new set fit into the existing space, it was agreed that Babylon would become a permanent set and the design team could get to work. "The preliminary designs were more clubby," Ingrid explains. "But then Ron and Dan reminded us that this is Pittsburgh, so they wanted it to be more on the industrial side. That's why it ended up essentially being a concrete and steel box...with some chains."
The designer gave one of the walls a simple, yet dramatic accent with the adition of rows of metal slats running from floor to ceiling. "The wall was a fun thing to add," Ingrid notes. "Everybody was hesitant about this idea of having all the metal slats, but our DP, Thom Best, really liked it. You can backlight it with all these colors to get the slats to really come out and create a wild space. With all out nightclub stuff, it's really the lighting that makes it."
"And it's always changing," Thom adds. "The light's always moving. So we can block where people don't have to stand still. It's fairly easy to shoot in Babylon because we've just lit it in such a way that you can shoot in pretty much any angle. It's not that big a set when you stand in it, but it shoots big. And when it's packed full of people and we use wide lenses on the camera, that really sells it."

Considering the aforementioned lack of studio space, it helps to have a set that's basically a big empty room that can easily be reconfigured. The side walls were moved back for the Carnal Carnivale in the third season, and the space was enlarged for the party celebrating the release of issue number on of Rage at the end of season two. Depending on the requirements of the schedule, other sets for smaller scenes have actually been built within the walls of Babylon, bringing true meaning to the phrase "form follows function." 

[taken from "Queer As Folk: The Book" by Paul Ruditis]
 

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