Technological Institute-2

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Opened: April 29, 1961
Station depth: 42m
Project title: Technological Institute
Popular names: Technolozhka ("techno-spoon")
Type of station: pylon
Entrance to the station: the lobby is built into the building of the Saint-Petersburg Metro Administration
Traffic: total about 906 thousand people per month

The station "Technological Institute-2", also called "the 2nd hall of the Technological Institute station", was opened much later than the 1st hall - together with the line 2nd Blue Line.

Metro station Technological Institute-2, Saint-Petersburg

The second hall, unlike the first, is designed strictly functionally. At that time, Khrushchev's wrecking program about total economy and the absence of decorative excesses was in effect. For the same reason, the second hall is dramatically smaller than the first, and the side platforms on it are generally of different lengths - the platform 2nd Blue Line shorter than the platform 1st Red Line by as much as 40 meters. The economy should be economical (c).

This is the first Leningrad metro station that I remembered when I was still a very small boy.

The theme of the station's design is the successes of science and technology of the USSR. On the marble pylons of the station there is a list of achievements of the Soviet Union in the period from 1920 to 1979.

1920: Lenin's plan for electrification of the whole country was adopted.
1922: The beginning of the widespread radioification of our country.
1934: Soviet scientists were the first to create the theory of a chain reaction.

1937: The first Soviet drifting station in the Arctic.
1938: The development of the Great Northern Sea Route.
1953: A high-speed electronic calculating machine was created in the USSR.
1954: The world's first nuclear power plant gave current.

1955: Jet passenger planes were created in the USSR.
1962: Mass production of the new powerful Kirovets K-700 tractor was started.
1957: The world's first artificial Earth satellite was launched in the USSR.
1958: The first Soviet automatic plant was built.

1958: The world's largest synchrophasotron came into operation in the USSR.
1959: A Soviet space rocket reached the surface of the moon.
1959: The world's first nuclear icebreaker "Lenin" was built.
1960: Invention and beginning of technical development of optical quantum generators (lasers).

1959: A Soviet rocket photographed the invisible side of the moon.
1960: The first hydrofoils were created in the USSR.
1960: Artificial diamonds were obtained in the USSR for the first time in the world.
1970: For the first time in history, a Soviet automatic station delivered lunar soil to Earth.

1961: On April 12, for the first time in the world, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made a space flight.
1965: The West Siberian oil and gas bearing area was opened and its development began.
1970: For the first time in history, the Soviet self-propelled vehicle Lunokhod-1 was delivered to the moon.

1965: Cosmonaut A. A. Leonov made a spacewalk for the first time in history.
1969: The world's first continuous steel casting complex was created and mastered in the USSR.
1971: The first Soviet long-term orbital scientific station "Salyut" was launched.
1974: Construction of the Baikal-Amur Railway began.

1970: Soviet scientists compiled an atlas of Antarctica for the first time.
1971: A Soviet automatic spacecraft made a soft landing on the planet Mars.
1973: The first fast neutron breeder reactor was created.
1976: The first stage of the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant came into operation.

1977: The Soviet nuclear icebreaker Arktika reached the North Pole for the first time in the history of navigation.
1979: The IL-86 wide-body passenger aircraft was created.

Currently, the track walls are finished with white marble with a strip of black finishing stone on the bottom and gray granite on top. But I still perfectly remember the times of the original tile decoration. There was a whole string of "tile" stations on this line. The replacement of tiles with marble was consistently carried out in 2011-2012.

By the way, the photo on the top left shows the entrance to the cross-platform transition. This is a unique feature of this particular station.

Both stations of the Technological Institute together represent the first cross-platform node in the USSR and the first transfer station in Leningrad in general. One of the two stations sends trains to the south, the second to the north, and it is enough to simply cross the platform to transfer. But since this station has a short central hall, two service crossings decorated with original tiles are also intended for transferring from one train to another. There are such crossings at many stations, but they are only available for passengers here.

The entrances to these corridors are quite inconspicuous, but all regular passengers know in advance which door of which car to take a low start position in order to dive into them as soon as the train doors open.

The corridors themselves are very narrow, so when at rush hour two trains arrive simultaneously from both sides and two seething streams of people rush towards each other, it is somewhat uncomfortable to be in them.

Accordingly, at this station, one of the trains arrives in each of the sides in the traditional position, opening the left doors along the train, and the second arrives in the "wrong" position and opens the right doors along the train. Here, for example, the train passes the station in transit by 1st Red Line in the "wrong" direction. From this station, trains only go north.

Interestingly, at some point in time, the use of caustic yellow sodium lamps for lighting swept through the entire Saint-Petersburg metro like a fierce plague. I don't know what kind of brain disease in the metro management caused it, but this station at some point in time did not escape the caustic yellowness. Fortunately, it didn't last very long.

Initially, the station did not have its own exit to the surface. The inclined passage here was opened only on July 18, 1980. At the same time, the central hall of the station was lengthened and several new pylons appeared, filled with new achievements of the USSR at that time.

Interestingly, this is the only place in Saint-Petersburg where the escalators of two different stations are displayed in a common lobby. Three escalators are located at the northern end of the station, the hermetic door is of the "guillotine" type.

Previously, there was a decorative wall at the exit site with the inscription "Now all the wonders of technology, all the conquests of culture will become public property and from now on the human mind and genius will never be turned into means of violence. V.I.Lenin". Now this inscription can be seen at the station Akademicheskaya.

Simultaneously with the alteration of the station, the lighting scheme of the station was changed - the lamps in the side halls became cornice. In 2007, the floors in the side halls were replaced.

At the opposite end of the central hall from the escalators is Technological Institutes, inter-station crossing. Interestingly, due to the peculiarities of the metro configuration, the flow of passengers in this transition is directed almost in one direction.

You can read about the transition separately at the link above, but here we add that if you climb the steps of the transition and look back into the station hall, you can see the design of the cornice lighting.

Then the transition turns to the right and passes over the platform 1st Red Line. Along the upper edge of the track wall, as usual, there is a radio antenna.

More of the interesting features of the station:

The station "Technological Institute-2" was never the terminus at 1st Red Line, but was the terminus at 2nd Blue Line from 1961 to 1963.
in 1976, the first television installation was installed here to view the escalators and the middle halls of both platforms.

In comparison with the stations of the first stage 1st Red Line, of course, looks poor. Those were the times.