In early 1872, the Municipality of Berlin commandeered the project of urban waste removal from the Prussian State. The history of the city’s first sewer system and the municipal water supply upon which it depended is a history that was written before the system was built: it was a narrative of sanitary urgency and engineering success for which the largest public infrastructural system undertaken by the city was to act as evidence. This presentation analyses that system as a design project whereby values and aesthetic vision was projected onto the system as it was being developed, rather than analysing the impacts of the project as built. In this way, the presentation hopes to question technological function as a justification for infrastructural systems and instead asks: if we accept infrastructure as a design process, could we rethink which values we project with them?