Behind newly dotted glass windows at the Chicago Architecture Center along the Loop’s bustling Wacker Drive, architects, environmentalists and exhibit curators are preparing to offer visitors a different perspective on Chicago.
On Thursday, the center will debut companion exhibits, “Living Habitat” and “Flyway City,” two installations that explore the relationship between Chicago’s dense urban landscape and the diverse ecosystems that surround it.
“Cities of the future are going to be designed much more around nature than cities of the past,” said Michael Davidson, president and chief executive officer of Openlands, the regional conservation organization that curated the Living Habitat exhibit.
“Living Habitat” features 16 landscapes representing ecosystems that stretch from southeastern Wisconsin to northwestern Indiana. “Flyway City,” designed and curated by Chicago-based architecture firm Studio Gang, examines bird collisions and the growing design movement to create bird-friendly buildings in Chicago.
Thousands of migratory birds die every year colliding with Chicago’s reflective and glass skyscrapers as they migrate along the Mississippi Flyway, posing a major threat to declining migratory bird populations worldwide.
To coincide with the exhibits, the Chicago Architecture Center installed bird-safe window treatments on its own glass facade last month.
“We can’t have this exhibition and then be causing harm at the same time,” said Eve Fineman, the center’s senior director of exhibitions, noting that the building on Wacker Drive has experienced bird collisions in the past.
The exhibits will run through Jan. 3, aligning with peak tourism season and the fall bird migration period, said Alissa Anderson, principal of publications and exhibitions and partner at Studio Gang.
Openlands worked with ecologists to identify ecosystems that represent remnant, restored and emerging natural areas across urban, suburban and rural landscapes.
“This is where the deciduous forests of the East, the grasslands of the West, hints of the coniferous forests from the North, and the Great Lakes all converge,” Davidson said. “It’s hard to see because it’s kind of hidden behind a very strong built environment — the great metropolis — but it is still there.”
Visitors view photos on display for “Living Habitat” during a preview on June 9, 2026, of two new exhibits on wildlife conservation initiatives opening at the Chicago Architecture Center. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
“Living Habitat” showcases prairies, wetlands, dunes, woodlands and urban areas, emphasizing the ecological importance of habitats that are often overlooked, said Davidson.
“Subtlety does not mean unimportant,” he said, referring to the region’s prairies, wetlands and oak savannas.
Davidson said he hopes the exhibit inspires visitors to explore these natural areas firsthand, noting that most, if not all, of the sites are open to the public.
Each display features QR codes to audio recordings of each ecosystem using avian listening devices developed by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers to capture the sounds of birds traveling through different habitats, said Openlands Vice President of External Affairs Huan Song.
Devices were set up at restored ecological sites like Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie — the former home of a World War II-era military ammunition plant that’s since been restored by the U.S. Forest Service and Openlands into a thriving prairie ecosystem that has seen the return of native bison populations in recent years.
Acoustic sounds were also captured atop Studio Gang’s rooftop garden and on top of the architecture center.
“You’ll hear trains, cars, along with the birds chirping, because that’s the reality that we live in,” Song said.
The recordings reinforce one of the exhibit’s central themes: Nature and urban life are intertwined, she said.
The companion exhibit, “Flyway City,” builds on that message by focusing on the millions of migratory birds that pass through the Chicago region each year.
“What I hope that people feel as they leave Chicago’s “Living Habitat” and move into “Flyway City” is a sense of, ‘wow, this place is a lot more important than I ever thought it was, and it’s worth protecting,’” Davidson said.
Visitors entering “Flyway City” are greeted by digital renderings of three migratory bird species frequently involved in collisions in Chicago: the American woodcock, ovenbird and yellow-bellied sapsucker, Anderson said.
A curved blue curtain wraps around the exhibit space, mimicking migratory flight paths for birds traveling along the Mississippi Flyway. The material is made from construction scaffolding netting, which can also be used by homeowners to make windows safer for birds.
The exhibit highlights examples of bird-friendly architecture in cities such as Chicago and Santa Cruz while explaining the design principles behind collision prevention.
Bird-safe glass typically follows a “2-by-2” pattern, Anderson explained, with visual markers spaced less than 2 inches apart vertically and horizontally to be recognized by even the smallest birds, like hummingbirds. Effective bird-safe treatments generally extend through at least the first 100 feet of a building — roughly the height of Chicago’s tree canopy.
The exhibit concludes with a call to action, encouraging visitors to sign a petition supporting a bird-friendly building ordinance that would require bird-safe window designs in new Chicago construction projects.
“What we’re trying to do with the show is share this clear information and message about the issue of bird window collisions and how we can solve it,” Anderson said. “But also to bring design and beauty and art to the issue, so that it can resonate for people on an emotional level as well as an intellectual level.”
The exhibits aim to challenge traditional distinctions between urban and natural environments.
“Everything in nature exists in a gradient,” Song said. “You can have a wet prairie, you can have grasses under trees. While people have boundaries that we’ve artificially drawn, nature doesn’t, and a lot of times you’ll see all of this kind of intermixed with each other.”
“We shouldn’t have to leave the Chicago region to experience nature,” Davidson added.
Admission for the exhibits is priced at $15 or as an add-on to the river cruise and supports the center’s educational programs, including funding an architecture curriculum and teen fellowship program through Chicago Public Schools, said Fineman.
For visitors already exploring Chicago through the center’s river tours, she said the exhibits deepen people’s understanding of buildings they see along their tour, including the St. Regis and Aqua Tower, both designed by Studio Gang, and examples of innovative bird-friendly architecture in Chicago’s skyline.
“Our hope is for people to understand that buildings and nature are not at odds with one another,” Fineman said. “When buildings are created in concert with nature, they’re better in so many ways.”