20+ years ago, I worked in several reactor control rooms. The light quality astonished me the first time I entered: it was bright, shadowless, and flicker-free. The entire ceiling acted as a light source; the whole area was covered in fluorescent tubes, positioned beneath a grid similar to those photographers use to control light spill from softboxes. The only way to see a direct light source was to look straight up. To prevent flickering, they used three-phase mains power, connecting one-third of the lamps to each phase.
Modern office lighting is far inferior. Almost every time I look up in the office, I am met with a harsh glare piercing my eyes.
The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
41–50 of 70 posts
Re: The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
#42Did the little hats do anything? Or were they just for show? I also wonder if they were only worn when the cameras came out.
Re: The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
#43We should reintroduce chef's hats back in the control rooms. Switching with real finesse!
Re: The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
#44Not great, not terrible.
Re: The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
#45This reminds me a classic joke:
"Fortran was invented by IBM. That is why you get a compiler error when you write Fortran without wearing a blue necktie".
Also, you might find interesting some movies by a French comedian called Jacques Tati. He made fun of these aseptic "modern" environments in movies like "Playtime" [1] and "My uncle".
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrYB8hgyq4s, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3L7aXoFAIo
Re: The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
#46I love these! Highly relevant: "Why So Many Control Rooms Were Seafoam Green" Link: https://bethmathews.substack.com/p/why-so-many-control-rooms... Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47518960 (3 months ago)
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Re: The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
#47Battersea power station in London has preserved chunks of the old control room. Sprawling mechanical complexity certainly has appeal, but we all know frutiger aero is the ultimate aesthetic.
Re: The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
#48It'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 70s: - here's Bugey, the oldest active nuclear plant in France: https://cdn-s-www.leprogres.fr/images/5A6732BE-29F9-43FA-806... - And here's Dampierre, the second oldest, which I was lucky enough to visit: https://www.larep.fr/photoSRC/Gw--/centrale-nucleaire-…
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.
Re: The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
#49To me they look oppressive and bleak. They are interesting, to be sure. But I don’t find them beautiful. And aesthetics are subjective, of course. I can well believe others find them beautiful.
Re: The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 wi…
META: Make sure that your adblocker is set to 11 on that site. In the first edition of The Design of Everyday Things [0], Norman has a photo of beer tap handles on control levers in a nuclear power plant control room. This was done, to differentiate two important handles. I won’t link to the photo, because it’s on personal blogs, and I don’t want to hug anyone’s site to death. The photo was removed, in the current ve…
I've seen pictures of the cockpit of a large plane where the gear lever has an actual wheel on the end of it.
I think that is exceptional good design.