There are elevated pipe systems all over Berlin. The pipes run alongside the streets and over the roads and look very industrial. For some reason, something half-remembered or half- read, I became convinced that the pipes marked the position of the old Berlin wall and were there as a
sort of memorial.
I told Anne this and we spent a long time discussing what a genius intervention this was. Really smart repurposing of existing materials, somehow low key and yet also really present. It dramatically changes your sense of the city and its psychogeography. We talked like that for quite a while. 'Wow' we said, as we walked around another bit of the city. 'I didn't realise the wall came out here'.
And then eventually we googled it and realised that none of that is true. It's just a way of getting overflow rain water to the rivers. Which is probably a parable somehow about the power of narrative around design but which is also a story about how I'm an idiot.