In 1971, Fernando Flores — a 28-year-old government official in Salvador Allende’s administration — recruited British cybernetician Stafford Beer to build a computer network that could manage Chile’s nationalized economy in real time. The result was Project Cybersyn, and its most iconic artifact was the Opsroom: a hexagonal control room with seven white fiberglass swivel chairs designed by a team led by Gui Bonsiepe. There were no keyboards. Instead, they opted for buttons that were embedded in the armrests alongside built-in ashtrays and whiskey-glass holders. The data displays on the walls were designed by hand, then photographed as slides projected from behind — they had more faith in what a human could render than what a mainframe could output.

The Opsroom was destroyed after Pinochet’s coup in September 1973. Only photographs survive. Bonsiepe, who led Chile’s first state-run industrial design group at INTEC, is 92 now. The most beautiful command center ever built for a country that no longer wanted it.