People loved the East Berlin design so much that they started using it on crosswalk lights throughout the whole city. Now there’s even souvenir stores entirely dedicated to him. Another interesting result of the city’s divide was that there are seemingly two of everything here (one for each side); Berlin has two zoos, two opera houses, two TV towers, and two airports (although they have recently been combined into one).
As an architect, these types of ‘quirks’ in the city can help us trace the past and learn more about how Berlin evolved into the city we see today. A useful tool for this is a figure-ground map, which is a black and white simple representation of buildings in a city seen from above. Looking at this type of map can make it easier to detect urban anomalies like in my example, where you can clearly see buildings that were demolished to make way for the wall. The wall may be gone, but a ‘scar’ of its past remains.
