Woking Electrical Control Room (2016)
darbiansphotography.com
darbiansphotography.com
Really interesting how depression-era infrastructure like that was still built with so much attention to aesthetic design.
Today it would just be screens on a wall, industrial carpet floor, drop-tile ceiling with LED lights, a few Steelcase cubicles for the operators and little else.
Or do we only look at old things that were pretty? I bet in 100 years nobody is going to look at our drab utilitarian offices, they’re gonna share photos of the beautiful offices with great interior design (they exist) and wonder why they don’t build them like that anymore.
One thing I notice is how much efforts had been spent to illustrate both the current status of the system, but also it's overall structure and how the two relate - i.e. the actual components of the facility.
Almost all of the dashboards here have some kind of graph, showing the wiring or plumbing between components, or in case of railway control, the railway lines. The graph acts like a map on which status indicators or switches can be placed.
Compare that to modern software "dashboards" which are full of complicated charts showing various metrics, but almost never show the structure of the system.
https://sterlingcontrols.com/wp-content/uploads/Main-Process...
I guess I mixed up different things here - I was thinking about "software dashboards" like Grafana or various Kubernetes frontends.
I didn't know this is still done for dashboards of industrial systems. I think then my annoyance is more that this has never been translated to other areas, like software systems.
The wonderful combination of beauty through a clear focus on functionality, supported by just enough of a sense of majesty to lift the whole space beyond pure functionality makes it a little more special.
This is probably a place that was always considered at least somewhat beautiful given its strong design, but more generally speaking I find it really interesting seeing how functional ~1930-1970s era industrial units like this have kinda become fascinating and (in their own way) beautiful places in the eyes of so many (me included).
I often wonder how people in the future will look back at our current humdrum infrastructure and what they might think of it. No doubt there'll be just as much nostalgia and fascination in some quarters, but i have to admit it's a little hard at times for me to see what elements of modern infrastructure will become the focal point of curious minds in, say, the 2050s.
That said, I did visit a museum last year that had some pylon insulators and some other old 1990s electric-grid equipment and I found it kinda interesting and beautiful in its own way so what do I know?!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/132123913@N03/48775624516/in/a...
In the age of digital clouds we've lost the tactile experience of managing the infrastructure we rely on to (IMHO) our own detriment.
I would like to imagine that if pushing a change to production meant a development had to walk down a wall of cabinets with blinking lights toggling chunky switches as they went the simple physicality of the act would be enough to make them pause and wonder if everything really was in order.
https://filming.networkrail.co.uk/filming-locations/woking-e...
The space requirement comes from two things: the diagrams on the panels are actually fairly complex with lots of controls thwt fit mostly inside the diagrams themselves. Operators in the room should be able to scan the whole diagram easily from a central position.
Thw size of the room then becomes a requirement because all the panels need to be oriented inwards, not occluded and they can't shrink down too much because the controls need to fit.
Backside of the panels. This might help you understand why the amount of space used is not at all extravagant. We're spoiled with our disposable, tiny electronics. Those things were meant to last decades.
Before pixels: Modular industrial dashboards