Roosevelt Island's Pneumatic Tubes and the
Future of Cities
Welcome to Fast Trash, the online documentation of a 2010 exhibition on the history and future of Roosevelt Island's pneumatic garbage system. Fast Trash was initiated and organized by New York-based curator Juliette Spertus, working together with the design firm Project Projects. The goal of this website is to document the exhibition and its events, and to make the original materials uncovered during our research available to all.
Gregory Whitmore, AVAC System, 1:20, DVD, 2010.
What if we radically changed the way we move garbage through the city?
Despite its critical role for urban spaces, garbage collection is usually treated as a technical issue for engineers and sanitation departments to resolve. As you will see here, installing pneumatic collection networks requires intense coordination between designers and engineers, municipalities and private developers, not to mention political will and a plan for the future. Fast Trash celebrates this integrated approach and asks what a community built around progressive policies and technologies can teach us about how we choose our infrastructure.
