3 ms·

It's not specific to the Soviet world, any control room built before computers looks like that. The examples I'm familiar with is nuclear power plants from the

• mysecretaccount 3mo ago
  There is a specific Soviet design sensibility in the post in question that is lacking in those images.
  • stymaar 3mo ago
    I'm pretty sure it's just the old photo look (plus the fact that in the current version, part of the space have been colonized by computers, which kind of ruins the mood).
    • bayindirh 3mo ago
      That's not true. If you look at Chernobyl Family[1]'s videos, modern Russian war equipment internals and their color choices, there's a longstanding research and deliberate choice behind them. Soviets/Russians seems to select the seafoam or tealish green colors as backgrounds since these colors create a calmer environment which helps when everything else is pressuring you. The most interesting thing is public ISS telemetry page at [2]. Go to Russian version and the color scheme changes to a bluish one which they also use with some of the interiors/control panels Russians use in similar equipment. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/@ChernobylFamily https://www.youtube.com/@ChernobylFamily [2]: https://iss-mimic.github.io/Mimic/ https://iss-mimic.github.io/Mimic/
    • mysecretaccount 3mo ago
      Is there some sort of cultural revisionism where we are expected to deny the existence of e.g. the Soviet design sensibility because of contemporary politics? What a bizarre response.
  • mrweasel 3mo ago
    Well, how about this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85gesta_Nuclear_Plant#/media/File:%C3%85gestaverket_1966.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85gesta_Nuclear_Plant#/med... This is from Swedens Ågesta Nuclear Plant, the first in the country. I don't really get why you'd need all the used floor space. That seems to really be the key difference from those early control rooms and more modern ones. The old ones had you walking around and the new ones are designed to keep you seated. Still, it seems like the old ones had an excessive amount of floor space.
    • varjag 3mo ago
      Heat dissipation and gracious distances for installation and servicing.
      • roryirvine 3mo ago
        Good point - all those incandescent lamps must have put out huge amounts of heat. Similarly, the stereotypical giant plasma displays in old-school telco/ISP NOCs made for a properly toasty environment. I know one ISP in the early 2000s who had to bring in a spare datacentre aircon unit to reinforce the puny office system which was completely unable to cope by itself.
    • masfuerte 3mo ago
      It has Playtime vibes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playtime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playtime
    • justsomehnguy 3mo ago
      That's because you look at it with a modern eye. It required a lot of wires back in the day. A lot.
• Lio 3mo ago
  Very true. It reminds me of the aesthetic[1] of German musician Hainbach[2]'s studio. He makes use of a lot of early test equipment. The look is very functional but not ugly. It's not colourful but everything is well made because it's made for professionals. I see the same thing in mid-century BBC studios. -- 1. Which I love. 2. https://www.hainbachmusik.com/ https://www.hainbachmusik.com/
  • Monotoko 3mo ago
    > It's not colourful but everything is well made because it's made for professionals. Nuclear plants, planes, etc use colour so you can differentiate very quickly under pressure. Much easier to shout "THE RED BUTTON!!!" than "The second button five down from the left!"
    • stymaar 3mo ago
      Sorry to break a myth, but you'll never hear someone about “THE RED BUTTON ” in a nuclear control room. There's way too much buttons that happens to be red for that. Nuclear operators are highly trained professionals (two years of training in France, for instance) who know their machine by heart, so what you'll hear will be much more specific like “isolate vapor generator number 3”. Also, the way it's organized it will very rarely be orders, but instead description if what each of them are doing while following the safety procedure, to keep other crew members aware of what they're doing. So no “Press that god damn red button!” but instead “I'm bypassing turbine through GCTA and moving to step 342.B.3”.
      • wwind123 3mo ago
        A few years ago I listened to a seminar where a few real professional doctors discussed the hospital scenes in movies or TV shows. They mentioned that those dramatic and chaotic operation room scenes where the doctor yells commands with a loud voice look so fake to them. In a real operation room, everyone (including the doctor and the nurses) is highly trained, works in tandem calmly and efficiently -- there's never a need to raise voice.
• raffael_de 3mo ago
  control rooms are central to controlling expensive systems serving important purposes and whose failure might be highly dangerous. that's why function is the essential and indisputable primary goal. accordingly their design is all about "form follows function". why form that follows function is so distinctively appealing and aesthetic is up to debate ... but empirically it is.
• SoftTalker 3mo ago
  French operators wearing jeans, Soviets wearing white coats and sailor's caps.
• KludgeShySir 3mo ago
  It gives me strong impressions of the aesthetic in the show Maniac (~2018)