dry floodproofing.pngno voc.pngemergency lighting.pngactive design.png


The NY Aquarium in Coney Island suffered major damage from Hurricane Sandy. Source: Julie Larsen Maher, WCS

Cultural Institutions can occupy a very broad array of building stock. They run the gamut from performing arts venues, to museums and galleries, to historic sites. Despite their extreme diversity, they share several things with libraries: they often contain repositories for rare and/or valuable manuscripts (as well as the buildings themselves are sometimes the artifact) and they are important community facilities.

There are hundreds if not thousands of cultural institutions in NYC and some of them are administered wholly or partially by DDC. Four of these institutions are located within the SIRR flood zones.

Special Resilience Considerations

Flood Events
Generally,cultural institutions might have a mixture of office space and gallery-type space, so dry floodproofing techniques should predominate to protect the art and artifacts stored within.

Other Upgrades
In addition to disaster resilience, attention should also be paid to everyday use. For this reason, the use of low- or no-VOC materials and "active design" should be considered. This is especially true in the case of a use in which a large portion of the users is the public.