Chicago is indeed a city in a garden just as our “Urbs in Horto” motto has been telling us in Latin since 1837.
We tend to get the urbs part right, with the buildings, infrastructure and all. But too often, the horto gets treated like garnish — mere green detailing surrounding the built environment — when in reality, the garden is a living thing just as complex, vital and in need of protection as the human-made structures we construct and admire.
“Flyway City: Architecture for a Flourishing Ecosystem”, and “Chicago’s Living Habitat”, companion exhibitions that opened this week at the Chicago Architecture Center, 111 E. Wacker Drive, rightfully reminds us of the importance of balancing nature and architecture.
Designed and co-curated with the Chicago Architecture Center by the celebrated architect Jeanne Gang — who is a birdwatcher — and her firm, Studio Gang, Flyway City shows how glassy facades can be designed or reworked to help keep birds from running into buildings. That’s an important thing given Chicago is a major north-south flyway.
“Chicago’s Living Habitat” widens the lens a bit, using vivid photography and text to show the remarkable landscapes and natural areas in the region that are key to wildlife’s survival and should be preserved and uplifted.
Created by the Chicago conservation group Openlands, the exhibit profiles places such as the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, a former Will County munitions factory site that is now a 19,000-acre open space, the Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary, Indiana Dunes National Park and Hackmatack National Wildlife Refuge.
The pairing is a one-two punch designed to encourage the public and decision makers to think about the built and natural environments as one.
“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.”
“We have to take care more,” she said. “Take care that we don’t just decimate bird populations that come in.”
Chicago Architecture Center CEO Eleanor Gorski said the idea for Flyway City came from a discussion she had with Gang about buildings in nature.
Gorski is an architect and former Chicago Department of Planning and Development official. Gang, whose work includes noted Chicago skyscrapers, Aqua Tower and its Lakeshore East neighbor The St. Regis Chicago, weaves sustainability and environmental sensitivity into her designs.
“[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.
The exhibit begins with visitors entering Openlands’ Living Habitat, which examines 16 significant landscapes in the Chicago, Wisconsin and Indiana region.
Beautiful photography and straightforward text show and explain the area’s wide variety of natural, reclaimed and human-made ecosystems, such as wetlands, prairies, dunes, swales and woodland, in addition to the wildlife that predominates.
“This city is still a part of nature and needs to take nature strongly into consideration on issues or urban design and architecture,” Openlands CEO Michael Davidson said. “There’s a price to pay in not doing this.”
Yes, indeed there is, as this week’s weather reminds us. For instance, there would be less flooding if we had historically done a better job of protecting green space and constructing environmentally-responsible landscapes that could absorb stormwater then release it slowly into the sewers systems.
As Flyway City shows, care needs to be taken in constructing the glass buildings the city — and architecture critics — love. Birds can’t read the glass as a barrier and will fly straight into the facade, killing or injuring themselves.
There was that night in October 2023 when 1,000 migrating birds died after striking Lakeside Center at McCormick Place.
But the next year, convention center officials put up window film with fritted patterns the birds could see. Management also started turning off some building lights at night. The measures reduced the number of bird strikes by 98%.
The Chicago Architecture Center 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 work follows a similar tack with building models and interactive displays at Flyway City.
“We show [our] project from UC Santa Cruz, which is where their environmental program is,” Gang said. “We treated 100% of the glass on that project. We did this cool frit that’s shaped like the different critters in the redwood forest. So that was more fun.”
Flyway City and Living Habitat are a lively and informative pairing that sends a powerful message without being preachy.
The show features hands-on experiences for kids, such as having them figure out how to make bird-safe window treatments for their homes. And there’s a bit of work for the grown-ups as the show encourages Chicagoans to support the creation of ordinances like New York City’s Local Law 15.
The Big Apple’s ordinance mandates the use of bird-friendly material on at last 90% of a new or rehabbed building’s facade — up to 75 feet above ground.
Chicago can — and should — have something similar.
Gorski 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.”
The exhibition is in the center’s Skyscraper Gallery and runs until Jan. 3.