Water Art Elbinsel Kaltehofe

This guide to Water Art Elbinsel Kaltehofe in Hamburg starts by counting the small brick valve huts lining the old filter basins, thirty-six of them when the island's sand-filtration works opened in 1893, built at speed after a cholera outbreak killed more than eight thousand people in a few terrifying weeks. It follows the decade of engineering debate that preceded the catastrophe, and the almost century of unglamorous daily work the plant did afterward, filtering the river through sand and a living algae skin workers called the Schmutzdecke. You'll hear what happened when the plant shut down in 1990 and Hamburg simply stopped tending the island for twenty years, letting the basin walls do something nobody planned. Follow the line of brick huts with your eyes as you walk the old basin edges.