Big Buttons, Analog Dials: The Lost Aesthetic of Soviet Control Rooms

A photo collection revisits the control rooms of the Soviet era, when critical infrastructure was managed through walls of physical switches, illuminated buttons, and analog gauges rather than the screens and software that dominate operations today. The images capture a design language built around tactile, purpose-built hardware — every function tied to a dedicated dial or lever — that predates the commodification of computers.

Among the featured spaces is the control room of Chernobyl’s Reactor 4, the site of the 1986 disaster, alongside other industrial and scientific facilities. Beyond nostalgia, the images are a reminder of how radically operator interfaces have changed: dense analog panels once served as the human-machine boundary for reactors, power grids, and factories, a role now abstracted into monitors and centralized dashboards.