The possibilities of travelling through time in colour.

Nothing feels more real at times, that the awareness of an other time. While in science labs, the possibility of time travel might still be in its working stages, the experience is not entirely impossible in the everyday. All it takes is context. Marinated in history, clouded in the ashes of ideology and financially running on a very strict diet, Berlin is one of those cities, where the probability of such journeys is still relatively high thanks to some of the buildings which shape its sky line. One such vessel in time is the “Versuchsanstalt für Wasserbau” or Berlin Model Basin (VWS).

Its exterior façade, a giant pink pipe penetrating a grey cube, resembles a model of the inside of a flushing system, super sized. Constructed in 1976 as a physical basin to carry out hydrodynamic and navigational engineering tests to improve the design of ship models, the building was shut down in 2004. An architectural innovation in its day, it was admired for its purely Functionalist principles. Function is the priority, form follows. Yet as time passes and function becomes obsolete, the roles begin to reverse, it seems.

Although no longer in official use, the building’s life-support comes from the neighbouring university research projects and a few permanently stationed white-haired boys. Their constant presence makes them blind perhaps to certain particularities of the structure which immediately jump at 2011, monochrome-accustomed eyes. The place is drenched in colour. Pink pipes, yellow cables, green heaters, orange wires, red machines and I was back in 1976, in something simultneously simulating a scientists’ playground and an ambitious sci-fi movie set. Although I initially set out to appreciate the technological work inside, I found it hard to trust machines dressed so colourfully. Would more respect be payed, if it were concrete or stainless steel? I wondered.

And why pink for the exterior? Urban legend has it that the City’s Planning and Development Office, concerned about the effects on the city’s skyline, were against the original pink proposal. It was decided that the construction would be carried out in the official colour of the VWS, blue. The blue turned out to be unstable however, and like disappearing ink, faded over time, reverting back to its original. Whether this was really the case or simply architecture student gossip is debatable. Although it seems unlikely that architect Ludwig Leo, whose philosophy was strictly Functionalism, would commit to such an artistic intervention, our guide did offer a more pragmatic answer to the query: “The pipe is covered with insulation and pink was the cheapest.”, the colour, it seems, not only serves to reflect the technologies of the time, but also the time itself.

If you find the idea of space travel more appealing however, you don’t need to go further than your wrist watch, the design of which is pretty much based on the measuments of the solar system, compressed. A mini pocket universe, avaliable at all times, sounds cooler than an iphone, almost.