Discovering Berlin’s waterways has taken on a new meaning since I came across Quellcode. And while all things water — from summer raindrops and ice cubes to lake spots — are pretty much always on my mind, I’d never paid much attention to Berlin’s water pumps. You see them everywhere, but seeing them as a way to connect with your neighborhood? That had never occurred to me. Thanks to Julien, that has changed.
Quellcode maps all 1,968 of Berlin’s historic street pumps, alongside an optional layer showing the 315 drinking fountains operated by the water utility. The distinction is an important one, and not necessarily obvious when you encounter them on the street. The fountains provide tested drinking water, while the hand pumps do not. The latter are emergency wells, drawing groundwater independently of the mains and kept in case the city’s regular water supply ever fails. On an ordinary day, they have more everyday uses: someone fills a watering can, a cyclist cools off, a dog takes a drink, or kids play with the handle in summer. More interesting still is what the map can’t tell you on its own: whether the water is actually running.
That’s where the community comes in. Anyone standing at a pump can report its condition, with the app verifying that you’re actually there. Each observation is dated and located, turning a quick check on your way through the Kiez into part of a shared, up-to-date record. You don’t need to be a developer to contribute to this source code. Here, the “source” is quite literal (water) while the code is written collectively, one observation at a time. Somewhere between water source and source code, the name Quellcode is rather apt.
The app is available not just in German, but e.g. also in French and recently, Turkish. That latest addition wasn’t simply about reaching more users. Julien noticed that Turkish already appears on some of the city’s official “no drinking water” signs. In other words, the language was on the object before it was in the app. Rather than adding languages for the sake of it, he’d prefer to wait until someone from a community can help with a proper translation.
Julien, who traded Paris for Berlin almost ten years ago and publishes his projects under the name InvisibleChaos, has been fascinated by water for much longer. He studied oceanography and has spent the past seven years exploring much of Berlin’s waterways by packraft. The pumps, meanwhile, were something he’d wanted to photograph and collect for years. New AI tools finally gave him a way to turn that fascination into the system he had in mind — small, useful technology that gives something back to the neighborhood.
And the neighborhood is beginning to answer back. While photographing one pump, Julien got talking to a passerby who had stopped to ask about his recumbent bike; the conversation soon moved from two wheels to water infrastructure. At another pump in Prenzlauer Berg, a crow appeared for a drink and made it into the project’s gallery. A first meeting with a Kreuzberg neighborhood association is also coming up, suggesting that Quellcode’s community layer might eventually extend beyond the observations on its map.
There’s a quiet political idea behind this, too. It makes you wonder who the city belongs to, who its water belongs to, and how much we really know about the infrastructure around us. Quellcode doesn’t try to answer these questions with a petition or campaign. It’s free, with no ads, tracking or account required. Just open it in your browser, see what’s around you and add an observation if you happen to pass a pump. Taken together, these reports become a coverage map for an Ortsteil or even a repair list to hand to a district office.
And on a hot Berlin day, there’s an even more immediate reason to open the map: those 315 drinking fountains, most of which run from spring to fall. Unlike the hand pumps, their water is part of Berlin’s regular drinking water system, which draws almost entirely on local groundwater. The famously hard water might leave its mark on your kettle, but the calcium and magnesium behind the limescale aren’t a health concern. The hand pumps are another matter. Their untreated groundwater is not drinking water, however tempting a splash from one might look. Thirsty for more? Meet your neighborhood pump and bring some fresh energy to Berlin’s water network, and maybe your neighborhood network, too.
Text: Nina Trippel / Photos: Adi Christensen
Quellcode
