Affording Resilience

In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, there has been a great deal of design thinking about how to retrofit affected buildings. Some creative ideas include increasing building volumes to make up for the units lost by placing utility systems on higher floors or implementing innovative landscape design to keep flood waters at bay. Many of these solutions, however, face regulatory barriers and very high price tags – a challenge for New York City’s affordable multifamily housing in the flood zones.

The NYU Furman Center, in partnership with AIANY and Enterprise Community Partners, organized the Retrofit Solutions Workshop in January 2014 to engage the building community in a collaborative conversation about retrofitting affordable housing for future threats. This exhibition showcases the ideas from that charrette and explores the options and impediments that multifamily buildings face as they seek to prepare themselves for long-term climate resilience.