But what does the exhibition look like? Upon entering the cleared-out former cinema library – our exhibition space – your gaze is immediately drawn to a 15-metre-long table. It consists of six modular elements, made from scaffolding trestles and yellow formwork panels, set up between the columns and the window front of the small auditorium. These construction site elements serve as a reminder that, once the design competition has concluded, the real work is only just beginning.

Passing by flowers and sweets, visitors make their way towards the large, long table; in the centre are the pavilion models, surrounded by a multitude of objects at various stations. Small things, large ones, towering ones, or those lying beneath lamps that you have to bend over to look at. The table is laid out like a timeline. The objects on the right tell the story of the historic pavilions (GDR) on Karl-Marx-Allee; moving towards the centre, there are displays on the current situation (workshop processes and models of the new pavilions); and at the left-hand end of the table, the focus is on the planned future (users of the new pavilions).

In our ideal scenario, the outcome of a visit to the exhibition is that the former official’s wife from the neighbourhood sits down with an ngbk member to eat a sheet cake, listens to an urban planner explain what these yellow sandwich panels actually are, and teases each other about not revealing what they’ve written on their little notes for the time capsule.