Forget the Stone, Kill Two Birds With One Window

By Margaret Lyons in Miscellaneous on Oct 28, 2004 6:04PM

Mark your calendars: Birds & Buildings: Creating a Safer Environment conference is scheduled for March 11, right here at IIT. According to the Bird Conservation Alliance, it's the "first-ever conference to educate architects about the building design choices that kill an estimated one billion birds each year in the US." So 32 birds die from flying into buildings every second? Uh, gross? According to the Sun-Times, crashing into buildings is "rapidly becoming the biggest contributor to the overall decline in bird populations."

"'Birds don't understand. Clear glass is like air to them,'" said Randi Doeker, president of the Chicago Ornithological Society," so you can make your own survival-of-the-fittest joke…here. Seriously, though, a billion dead birds seems like a lot. Attention, everyone: time to make glass less clear. Like this.

While bird enthusiasts and people who dislike gruesome death are trying to promote bird-friendly buildings, some who are more concerned with architecture may be reluctant to make changes. We think some of these bird-friendly buildings look pretty decent, but some of these bird death-trap buildings a good-looking, too. Chicagoist saw a dead bird chillin' on the sidewalk a few weeks ago and it grossed us out really bad. That's the dearly departed on the left.