Thanks to everyone who came to hang out. Including the gentleman seen in the last photo below, who did not come to the atrium to participate in the event, but whose studious drawing on his giant scroll made us feel that we chose the location well for our design-minded crowd.

Stay tuned for the next one…

Public Space Potluck
UPDATED VENUE: IBM Building Atrium
590 Madison Avenue (SW corner of Madison and E. 57th St.)
Thursday, April 7, 2011
UPDATED TIME: 6:30-8:30pm

Today’s dismal weather has us thinking of warmer, sunnier days to come — and with that anticipated thaw comes a new season of Urban Omnibus field trips! To kick things off, we are once again partnering with our friends the Design Trust for Public Space for a Public Space Potluck on Thursday, April 7 at the IBM Building Atrium Lincoln Center’s David Rubenstein Atrium.

The IBM Building Atrium is one of approximately 503 Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS) in New York City created as a result of an incentive zoning program that offered private developers an increase in density in exchange for the inclusion of public space or improvements for public benefit on the site. The incentives gave rise to such highly visible pedestrian areas as those found around Lincoln Center, Times Square, Greenwich Village and central Midtown. But the quality and utility of these 503 POPS has been inconsistent, and many have fallen into disrepair or become inaccessible. On April 7, join us at one of the city’s active, thriving POPS — and stay tuned for more on privately owned public spaces in an upcoming Omnibus feature.

We’ll bring plates, cups and utensils. You bring a dish and/or drink to share along with your friends, colleagues and fellow public space aficionados.

Let us know if you can make it by emailing rsvp@designtrust.org with “Potluck” in the subject line, or RSVP on the Facebook event page.

David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center
5:30-8:30pm (presentation at 6:30pm)
Broadway between 62nd & 63rd Sts.
1, 2, A, B, C, D to 59th Street Columbus Circle

The David Rubenstein Atrium, formerly known as the Harmony Atrium, was once a neglected pass-through between Broadway and Columbus. Today, the space — now being billed as Lincoln Center’s new “front porch” — has been revamped into a vibrant (and LEED-certified) gathering spot. Designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the space is now a ticketing venue and information area for Lincoln Center, complete with free Wi-fi, a media wall, vertical gardens, an art installation by Dutch textile artisan Claudy Jongstra and ample café seating.

Arrive by 6:30pm to hear Design Trust board member Sylvia J. Smith, FAIA, LEED AP, Senior Partner at FXFOWLE Architects and Partner-in-Charge of the Lincoln Center redevelopment, present an inside look at the renovation and expansion of one the world’s leading cultural institutions.

(Added bonus: Target Free Thursdays enliven the atrium with gratis public performances – stick around after the potluck to hear the Unsound Festival New York.)

Yesterday was a beautiful day for wandering along Roosevelt Island’s waterfront. The Omnibus team and fifty of our friends spent the afternoon learning about the history of the masterplan, seeing one of the infamous pneumatic trash chutes in action, and getting a guided tour of the Fast Trash! exhibition (open for one more week!). Thanks are in order for Juliette Spertus, Judy Berdy, Jack McGrath, Adam Michaels, and Marianne Lau for taking us around.

Scheduled tour-guide Donald Richardson, one of the masterplanners of Roosevelt Island, was unable to join us at the last minute. Luckily, Judy Berdy of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society was part of the group and stepped in to fill his shoes. Berdy shared her extensive historical knowledge of the island, from its days as Blackwell’s Island, home to a penitentiary, smallpox hospital and asylum for the insane, to its transition to a hospital complex, renamed Welfare Island, and its subsequent redevelopment in the late 1960s/early ’70s into the Roosevelt Island we know today. The original three-phase masterplan, developed by architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee, anticipated housing and services for 20,000 residents and turned the island into a car-free zone, connected to Queens by the Roosevelt Island Lift Bridge and to Manhattan by tram and subway (though F train service did not come to the island until 1989). Ultimately only phase one was implemented, and car-free didn’t take hold (though the island is essentially a one-road town — Main Street, supplemented by a few service roads), but the island flourished and is now home to approximately 12,000 people. Development continues, with a newly modernized tramway opening later this year and construction underway for the FDR Four Freedoms Park at the island’s southern tip.

One element of the masterplan that did get implemented — and the topic that piqued the interest of many of our meet-up attendees — is the island’s pneumatic trash system.  Juliette Spertus, architect, curator of Fast Trash! and subject of last week’s Omnibus feature, explained more about the history and implementation of this unusual trash collection system. Together with Jack McGrath, the exhibition’s curatorial assistant, and Marianne Lau, an architect who lives on Roosevelt Island, Juliette walked us around the island, stopping to let us see the infrastructure in action. First stop: Riverwalk, courtesy of Charlie, a maintenance supervisor, who showed us one of the residential complex’s chutes. Next stop: the waste transfer station, where we saw the remarkably unassuming entry point where the island’s two central tubes converge to deposit the trash of thousands and peered in through windows at the facility.

While walking along the waterfront, we caught sight of another project of interest to Omnibus readers: the tidal hydropower turbine project implemented by Verdant Power and Keyspan to harness the energy of the tidal estuary that is the East River.

We wrapped up the afternoon at the exhibition space itself, watching a sample Lamson airtube shoot a capsule over our heads and across the room, looking at archival documentation of New York City’s now-defunct pneumatic mail delivery system, and learning about past experiments and current advances in pneumatic waste management in cities around the world. Juliette, Adam Michaels of Project Projects, who designed and co-organized the exhibition, and other members of the exhibition team discussed the research and inspiration for the show and pondered issues surrounding waste management and consumption on a broader scale. Our nation consumes at an excessive rate, producing a similarly excessive waste stream, one that is whisked away to far-off landfills, making it easy for us to ignore or deny the larger impact our habits create. The relative invisibility of our waste management system, it was argued yesterday, might detract from our perception of individual accountability. Would a centrally-located, highly-visible waste disposal system encourage better practices? How can we learn from the infrastructure investments being made in places like Stockholm, Barcelona or Macau? Both Juliette and Judy also rallied for individual and community involvement on a local level. The existing system is reaching its limits, and those who support its modernization, potential expansion to incorporate recycling, or even exploration of the technology’s plausibility beyond the island must make their voices heard. Sound advice from a Sunday afternoon walking tour.

As always, thanks to everyone who came out to join us. Don’t miss our next event. Sign up for our weekly email, become a fan of Urban Omnibus on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter to keep up with the latest.

Judy Berdy of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society

Charlie, maintenance supervisor, Riverwalk.

Architect and Roosevelt Island resident Marianne Lau.

Project Projects' Adam Michaels and Fast Trash! curator Juliette Spertus.

Photos by Varick Shute or Cassim Shepard.

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.

What is the role of garbage collection in planning for dense urban environments?

What lessons can be learned from cities’ experiences with pneumatic collection?

Should installation of pneumatic systems be a priority for new development and retrofitting existing neighborhoods in New York?

FAST TRASH is an exhibition about the underground pneumatic garbage collection system in use on Roosevelt Island in New York City since 1975. We are so into this topic — exposing an innovative infrastructural system, exploring a fascinating New York city neighborhood, and speculating on what it might mean for the future of cities — that we are inviting all of you to come check it out in person at the first omnibus meet-up of 2010: save the date May 16th, 2pm on Roosevelt Island. [UPDATE: Complete info about the meet-up now posted here.] But first, this Thursday some of the issues that the exhibition brings to light will be discussed by a panel of international and local waste management experts and urban planners and designers.

FAST TRASH SYMPOSIUM: Garbage Collection and the Future of Cities

May 6, 2010 6 – 9pm

NYU Wagner School of Public Service

The Puck Building, The Rudin Family Forum for Civic Dialogue, 2nd Fl.

295 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012

Click here to RSVP.

The purpose of the panel is to open a dialogue around the role of garbage collection in the future of dense urban environments. Independent experts, planners and officials from cities in Europe and Canada experienced with underground waste transportation systems will describe the process and the context in which the decision was made.

The symposium is organized by Juliette Spertus, independent curator, and co-sponsored by the Urban Planning Department of NYU Wagner, the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC) and Envac, manufacturer of the Roosevelt Island system, as part of the 40th anniversary celebration of the 1969 master plan for the Island.

SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE:

6:00pm Session 1. City Presentations: Stockholm, London, Barcelona, Montreal

Introduced by Richard Anderson, President, NY Building Congress

Presentations by

Mike Youkee, Housing Expert and Development Consultant, London

Lovisa Wassbäck, Head of Waste Planning, Traffic Administration, Stockholm

Carlos Vazquez, Technical Director, Sanitation Department, Barcelona

Martin Maillet, Senior Project Manager for the City of Montreal

Put into perspective by Ken Greenberg, Architect and Urban Designer, Toronto

…
7:30pm Session 2. Panel Discussion

Introduced and moderated by Rosina Abramson, Vice President of Planning and Intergovernmental Affairs, Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation.

International experts of Session 1 are joined by NY officials

Suzanne Mattei, Director, NY State Dept. of Environmental Conservation, NYC Office

Steven Brautigam, Assistant Commissioner for Environmental Affairs, NYC Dept. of Sanitation

9pm Reception

…

FAST TRASH EXHIBITION ON ROOSEVELT ISLAND:

April 22 – May 23, 2010

Gallery RIVAA, 527 Main Street on Roosevelt Island

Hours: Wednesday and Friday 2pm-9pm and Saturday and Sunday 11am-5pm.

Web: www.fasttrash.org

The app, thanks to Irene and Brett’s wariness of function creep, is well edited. The speculative projects included all share what Irene called an aspect of unreality; not only were they visionary at the time they were introduced, but also unattainable. Quotes from the architects and a few architectural renderings are provided, but the user is left to draw conclusions about what the impact would have been.

Details about the Phantom projects are available to app users only once they are within range of the site, though they are accessible online at any time. This choice is intended to encourage people to treat the whole city as a museum, not just their mobile device.

After Irene and Brett’s talk we went on a short walk, exploring the projects accessible in Midtown, before finding a corner in a nearby bar to settle in and talk apps – the Great American iPhone App to be precise. A conversation about the Phantom City – what could have been – led to a discussion of what could be.  Everyone in the group, which ranged across age groups and professions, articulated what his or her dream app would be, some specific and some grand. An envisioned app that would track the daily route of the iPhone owner turned the conversation towards subjective mapping. Like a spatial journal, such an app could turn a map of the city into a personal checklist, encouraging urban exploration, as the Museum of the Phantom City’s bursts of light do, and prompting the user to fill in non-traversed areas. Or a user could access the paths other app users take through the city. Kevin Lynch’s theories put to the test. What could we learn about our city with that kind of information? What layers of the city might be revealed?

Besides the well-known GPS feature, the iPhone has several underused high-tech sensors like an accelerometer, an ambient light sensor, and an infrared sensor which can provide mass amounts of recordable data. But smartphones’ already demonstrated prowess at collecting information has not yet been matched by potential applications to centralize, disseminate, or make visible said data for advocacy or other productive uses.

Many hoped to find ways to use this technology for public information sharing beyond restaurant reviews. But close behind the utopian possibilities afforded by the new media, just as in all of the visionary sites that make up the Phantom City, are the dystopian ones. How do we ensure that this new public platform becomes something other than a new tool of consumerism? And when am I actually going to break down and buy one? At this point it doesn’t seem too far off.

Thanks to everyone who joined us, both on foot and in conversation. Check out a few photos of the event below. If you came along and have more pics to share, add them to our Flickr group and tag them “urbanomnibus.” To find out about more upcoming events, and to stay on top of our weekly features and forum posts sign up for our weekly email, become a fan of Urban Omnibus on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Check out other recaps of the event from our co-sponsor WNYC and Omnibus advisor Hoong Yee Lee Krakauer, Executive Director of the Queens Council on the Arts.

Rachel Aland is project associate of Urban Omnibus. She lives in Brooklyn.

Video excerpts courtesy of Wayne Congar

Photos by Varick Shute

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Clearly, we’re not the only ones who think this is the coolest thing to hit our iPhones since Shazam. Coverage from the Times to BLDGBLOG has affirmed that these guys are onto something. As Cheng and Snyder discussed in last week’s feature:

iPhones and mobile devices are undoubtedly transforming the way we navigate the city. Apps like Google Maps and Urbanspoon put an unprecedented amount of information about the city at one’s fingertips. Most of these programs, however, are purely functional in purpose: they seek to clarify the city, to demystify and make it more legible. In contrast, we are interested in how mobile media can deepen and intensify urban experience, perhaps even introducing new pleasures and mysteries of the metropolitan condition.

Cheng and Snyder have built a new app that uses GPS technology to explore “how mobile media can deepen and intensify urban experience, perhaps even introducing new pleasures and mysteries of the metropolitan condition.” The app is called “Museum of the Phantom City,” and it turns the iPhone into an “architectural dousing rod.” As you wander the streets of New York, it shows a city that could have been — 50 architecture sites that never got built.

WNYC’s Soterios Johnson took the iPhone tour with Irene Cheng. They started off at Bryant Park, the site of a proposed airport. Take a listen to the tour:

Cheng and Snyder developed the app with the help of the Van Alen Institute — the beta version of the app is available for free on iTunes, and you can see the whole tour on their website.

On Saturday afternoon, come join us and WNYC’s culture department as Cheng and Snyder take us on a mid-town tour of some of the sites. If you don’t have an iPhone, we’ll pair you with someone who does. RSVP to culture@wnyc.org.

Urban Omnibus and WNYC Meet-up
Museum of the Phantom City
Saturday, October 31
2:00-4:00 p.m.
Meet at the Bryant Park Fountain (6th Avenue side)
Drinks and conversation to follow
RSVP to culture@wnyc.org or on Facebook

Fred Bland, managing partner at Beyer Blinder Belle and masterplanner for the station’s renovation in the 1990s, reminded those assembled that what is now a sprawling maze of passageways, stairways and platforms was previously a narrow, choked set of pedestrian corridors linking together the 10 lines of IRT and BMT trains (transfers between the two sets of platforms required paying a second fare until 1967). Now, with inspiration drawn from such unexpected sources as the piazzas of Italian hill-towns, the transverses are wide, brightly lit and bedecked with art. The impressive “Hook, Line and Sinker,” created by environmental sculptor and friend of the Omnibus George Trakas, is installed throughout the station, in the masonry that lines the passageway walls, along the banister that leads up to the 2, 3 platform, and above commuters’ heads in the shaft of what used to be the entrance kiosk and is now the source of natural light for the concourse below. How often do you enjoy natural light while making a daily subway transfer? Bland’s idea to repurpose the former Times Plaza station-house to structure the skylights also serves to orient passengers to where exactly they are underground relative to what’s going on above.

Ongoing construction of the soon-to-open LIRR Atlantic Avenue terminal leave some passageways still restricted. Karrie Jacobs, contributing editor at Metropolis magazine and frequent user of the station, evoked the sensation of walking through a dream while commuting, unable to shake the feeling that the spaces just don’t make sense to one another. Mazes and crowds aside, the tour allowed us to stop and look at what we typically experience as a blur while we all rush through the station, from the particular type of granite selected for wall accents to a small peephole looking in on Trakas’ sculpture from the street above.

As always, thanks to everyone who joined us. Check out some of our photos below, and if you came along and have some of your own, add them to our Flickr group and tag them “urbanomnibus.” Don’t miss out on our next event. Sign up for our weekly email, become a fan of Urban Omnibus on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter to keep up with the latest.

Photos by Varick Shute