bird-safe building – Two new exhibitions at the Chicago Architecture Center urge Chicago to treat birds and green space as part of the city’s built environment. From glass facades reworked to prevent strikes to lessons drawn from areas like the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie a
On a city known for glassy towers, the question posed by Jeanne Gang’s latest exhibition is blunt: what happens when birds can’t read your windows as danger?
This week. Chicago Architecture Center opened two companion exhibits—“Flyway City: Architecture for a Flourishing Ecosystem” and “Chicago’s Living Habitat”—inside the Chicago Architecture Center at 111 E. Wacker Drive. Designed and co-curated with the Chicago Architecture Center by Gang and her firm. Studio Gang. the shows frame the city’s famous “urbs” identity—its buildings and infrastructure—alongside the “horto” side of its Latin motto. a living garden that needs protection.
“Flyway City” focuses on how glass facades can be designed or reworked to help keep birds from running into buildings. Gang, a birdwatcher, connects the idea to Chicago’s geography as a major north-south flyway.
“Chicago is this city on a flyway,” Gang said. “We can lean into that identity, and [the idea] of nature in the city [that] the birds need as a stopover. It’s really kind of a cool event that not every city has.”
She also pushed for the responsibility that comes with that identity. “We have to take care more,” Gang said. “Take care that we don’t just decimate bird populations that come in.”
At the center of the exhibit is a practical message with an urgent edge: birds can’t interpret glass as a barrier, so they fly straight into the facade—killing or injuring themselves.
The stakes are not theoretical. The article of record points to a night in October 2023 when 1. 000 migrating birds died after striking Lakeside Center at McCormick Place. After that. convention center officials took action the next year: they put up window film with fritted patterns the birds could see. and management began turning off some building lights at night. Those measures reduced the number of bird strikes by 98%.
The Chicago Architecture Center itself has also taken steps. It stopped bird strikes by putting pattered film on one of the large windows in its own headquarters. located in the base of a glass tower designed by Mies van der Rohe and the architecture firm Fujikawa Johnson Gobel Architects. Gang’s exhibition follows that same path with building models and interactive displays, including a project from UC Santa Cruz. In that case. Gang said her team treated 100% of the glass. using a frit pattern shaped like the different critters in the redwood forest.
“This is cool frit that’s shaped like the different critters in the redwood forest,” Gang said. “So that was more fun.”
While “Flyway City” zeroes in on architecture. “Chicago’s Living Habitat” widens the lens with vivid photography and text meant to show why regional landscapes matter to wildlife survival—and why those areas should be preserved and uplifted. Created by the Chicago conservation group Openlands. it profiles places including the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. a former Will County munitions factory site now preserved as a 19. 000-acre open space. the Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary. Indiana Dunes National Park. and Hackmatack National Wildlife Refuge.
The pairing works like a two-part argument made in different languages: one through design changes that can be built into a facade, the other through the ecosystems birds rely on before and after they cross the city.
Openlands CEO Michael Davidson framed it in terms of cost. “This city is still a part of nature and needs to take nature strongly into consideration on issues or urban design and architecture,” Davidson said. “There’s a price to pay in not doing this.”
The exhibition’s themes extend beyond wildlife. The piece points to the same environmental logic in another arena—flooding—suggesting there would be less flooding if the city had historically protected green space and constructed environmentally responsible landscapes designed to absorb stormwater and release it slowly into the sewer systems.
Inside the show, the message is delivered through more than panels and models. There are hands-on experiences for kids. including an activity where they figure out how to make bird-safe window treatments for their homes. Adults are asked to think about policy too. with the exhibit encouraging Chicagoans to support the creation of ordinances like New York City’s Local Law 15.
New York’s Local Law 15 mandates bird-friendly material on at last 90% of a new or rehabbed building’s facade—up to 75 feet above ground. Gang’s exhibition offers that model as something Chicago could adopt.
Chicago Architecture Center CEO Eleanor Gorski said the idea for “Flyway City” came from a discussion she had with Gang about buildings and nature. Gorski. an architect and former Chicago Department of Planning and Development official. said she and Gang talked about wildlife and making buildings more welcoming not just to people. but to the broader ecosystem.
“[Jeanne and I] got into a broader conversation about wildlife, nature and making buildings … more conducive to not just people and the environment but to the wildlife that is part of our ecosystem,” Gorski said.
Gorski also described the center’s shift in what public mission looks like. She said concentrating on the connection of nature and buildings is now part of the Chicago Architecture Center’s public mission, just as much as architectural preservation and its famed Chicago River tours.
“Historic preservation used to be characterized by little old ladies in tennis shoes,” she said. “The river was characterized by people [saying] ‘Who would be crazy enough to try to swim in it?’ But now we accept both of those as important to the fabric of our city. That’s what our hope is for this exhibit.”.
In a city where architecture can feel like permanence. these exhibitions insist on a different standard—one measured by who survives to see the next season. “Flyway City: Architecture for a Flourishing Ecosystem” and “Chicago’s Living Habitat” are on view in the Chicago Architecture Center’s Skyscraper Gallery through Jan. 3.
Jeanne Gang Studio Gang Chicago Architecture Center Flyway City bird-safe glass bird strikes Openlands Chicago’s Living Habitat Lakeside Center McCormick Place Local Law 15
Birds don’t even read glass, so how is this supposed to work?
Okay but won’t that make the buildings look ugly? Like more stickers on windows? I get it, birds are dying but Chicago is already too strict with design stuff.
I feel like this is just another “eco” exhibit that looks nice but doesn’t change anything. If they rework the glass, is the city actually going to force developers to do it or is it just for people to look at for a week? Also Midewin sounds like a whole different place lol.
Wait so they’re basically saying Chicago skyscrapers are the problem because birds can’t tell they’re windows? That’s wild. Meanwhile I still see birds flying into stuff near my neighborhood, and it’s not even tall glass towers. Maybe the “flyway” thing means weather or lights? Idk just seems like too much effort for bird control.