A metro platform has a fairly straightforward job. Put people beside the correct train. Tashkent’s Kosmonavtlar station also makes provision for contemplating the cosmos, which is generous considering the length of most waits.
Opened in 1984, the station was designed by Sergo Sutyagin and Sergei Sokolov. Its walls move from pale ceramic bands to deep blue, while a long ceiling light represents the Milky Way. Circular portraits and scenes place space exploration along the platform. Icarus and Ulugh Beg appear in the wider sequence alongside figures from the Soviet space programme.
The thing that catches the eye in this photograph is how ordinary the arrangement remains underneath all that ambition. Two rows of columns, benches, signs, the yellow line at the edge. The repeated circles on the walls sit within a remarkably orderly perspective. Even the Milky Way has been persuaded to run in a straight line.
There’s a particular pleasure in finding this much visual thought in somewhere people use on the way to somewhere else. Nobody needs to set aside an afternoon for it. You can notice a portrait, or the change in the blue, and still have most of your attention on whether this is your train.
Kosmonavtlar metro station, Tashkent. Architects: Sergo Sutyagin and Sergei Sokolov, 1984. Photo: Alexey Narodizkiy. Courtesy of ACDF. Source
