On Sunday, May 16th, do not miss a rare opportunity to explore Roosevelt Island with one of its masterplanners and then enjoy a guided tour of an exhibition that unveils the Island’s best kept secret: it’s trash collection system is straight out of the Jetsons… But what’s cool about Fast Trash, an exhibit that we’ll explore in greater depth in this week’s feature, is that it is about more than an idiosyncratic technology of waste removal. It’s about how sometimes the infrastructural systems we take from granted warrant a closer look, sometimes we can find radically different ways of doing things around the corner, sometimes we need to look to the past to find future-facing innovation.

We’ll be discussing all that and more with Juliette Spertus, an architect and the curator of the exhibit Fast Trash, and with Donald Richardson, a landscape architect with Zion, Breen and Richardson who worked with John Burgee and Philip Johnson on Roosevelt Island’s masterplan. We’ll be meeting at 2pm just outside the F train Roosevelt Island stop. We’ll take a walk with Mr Richardson and then check out Fast Trash. If your interest is not already piqued by the exhibition, read this:

Part infrastructure portrait, part urban history, the exhibition argues that service infrastructure plays a crucial role in cities and is even capable of inspiring the collective imagination. Roosevelt Island was designed in the late 1960s as a brand-new community where technology and urban design would allow New Yorkers of all incomes to enjoy the best of Manhattan without the nuisance of cars—or trash. Often perceived as Manhattan’s quirky doppelganger, the exhibition reveals Roosevelt Island to also be a groundbreaking case study for the future, offering valuable insights into a community built around progressive policies and technologies.

The exhibition explores the history of Roosevelt Island’s pneumatic garbage system by tracing key events in the Island’s development alongside milestones in New York City garbage collection and alternative transport technologies. Brochures, advertisements, and other ephemera from Roosevelt Island’s archives illustrate the themes and the urban preoccupations of the 1970s. Photographs of the engineers and technicians at work at Roosevelt Island’s facility and video interviews create a portrait of one of the world’s early pneumatic garbage systems, as it operates today.

What: Urban Omnibus Meet-up

Where: Roosevelt Island, meet outside the F train stop

Who: Juliette Spertus and Donald Richardson, FASLA

When: Sunday, May 16th, 2010, 2pm

Contact: Email info (at) urbanomnibus (dot) net if you have any questions.