Overview

Flyway City: Architecture for a Flourishing Ecosystem is a new exhibition designed and co-curated by Studio Gang in collaboration with the Chicago Architecture Center (CAC). It opens on June 11, 2026 and runs through January 3, 2027 at the Skyscraper Gallery within the Chicago Architecture Center. The exhibition belongs to the fields of architecture, ecological urbanism, facade design, and wildlife conservation. It opens simultaneously with its companion exhibition Chicago’s Living Habitat, co-curated with Openlands, creating a dual ecological programme at the CAC running through early 2027.

Focus

The exhibition addresses one of the most quantifiable intersections of architecture and ecological harm: building glass collisions, which kill more than one billion birds annually in the United States. It frames this not as a wildlife issue separate from design but as a direct consequence of architectural decision-making around facades, glazing, and building placement within migratory corridors. Chicago sits on the Mississippi Flyway, one of the most heavily trafficked bird migration routes in North America, making the city both a critical habitat and a significant collision risk.

For those following how architects are being asked to extend their accountability to non-human stakeholders in the built environment, ArchUp’s analysis of sustainable urban design and its engagement with ecological systems provides a useful frame for the disciplinary repositioning that Flyway City is advocating for.

Program

The exhibition features architectural models and mock-ups, original illustrations, photography, building material samples, interactive media, and bird-related artefacts contributed by local Chicago organisations and individuals. Studio Gang presents built examples from its own practice that demonstrate bird-friendly design principles in action, including the Aqua Tower in Chicago, the David Rubenstein Treehouse at Harvard University, the Kresge College Expansion at the University of California Santa Cruz, and City Hyde Park.

The exhibition is set against an active legislative backdrop. A bird-friendly building ordinance in Chicago was still moving through City Council at the time of the exhibition’s opening, and Lake County, Illinois became the first jurisdiction in the United States to require bird collision prevention in new homes in May 2025. Bird strikes at McCormick Place dropped by more than 95 percent after bird-safe film was installed, demonstrating that the design interventions the exhibition advocates for are technically and economically viable at scale. Those tracking how building envelope design is evolving in response to ecological performance requirements will find a relevant built reference in ArchUp’s coverage of Singapore’s 8 Shenton Way tower and its biologically diverse facade and landscape design, which demonstrates how ecological considerations are entering high-rise design at the facade and landscape levels.

“More than 1 billion birds are killed each year in the United States from collisions with building glass. Architecture is not separate from this problem. It is the problem.”

The exhibition explicitly invites visitors to take personal and professional action, framing design change as both scalable and achievable rather than aspirational. It is sponsored by Enjoy Illinois and supported by the Horn Family and the Comer Foundation Fund at the Chicago Community Foundation. For those interested in how bird-friendly design is becoming a regulatory and professional standard, ArchUp’s documentation of how architects are shaping sustainable design in response to ecological accountability maps the professional and policy landscape within which the exhibition’s argument sits.

Audience

The exhibition is open to the general public and included in standard CAC admission. It is relevant to architects, facade engineers, urban planners, landscape architects, environmental designers, students, ornithologists, and general visitors with an interest in the relationship between the built environment and urban wildlife.

Event Details

✦ ArchUp Editorial Insight

Flyway City is one of the more precisely targeted ecological arguments that a major architecture institution has mounted in recent years. By focusing on bird-glass collisions rather than the broader terrain of sustainable design, Studio Gang and the CAC have made a choice that trades comprehensiveness for specificity, and the trade-off is productive. The problem is quantifiable, the design solutions exist and are being tested, the legislative landscape is actively shifting, and the professional accountability is clear: architects specify glazing. That specificity allows the exhibition to move beyond aspiration into something closer to an evidence-based design brief. The Aqua Tower case is particularly instructive: Studio Gang’s own signature building is cited as part of the practice’s learning process on bird-safe design, which is a more honest and professionally useful framing than simply showcasing best practice. The exhibition’s legislative context, with the Chicago ordinance still pending and Lake County’s ordinance already in effect, gives the argument a live political dimension that most architecture exhibitions lack. The risk is that an audience primarily composed of architecture professionals and design students will receive this argument as confirmation of values they already hold, rather than as a challenge to specifiers and developers who are not in the room. Whether the exhibition reaches beyond that self-selecting audience is the structural limitation of the gallery format as a vehicle for professional change.

Closing Note

Flyway City is a well-focused and timely exhibition that connects architectural decision-making directly to a measurable ecological outcome. Its simultaneous opening alongside Chicago’s Living Habitat positions the CAC as the most ecologically engaged architecture institution in North America in its 2026 programming, and its argument is strengthened by the active regulatory and professional momentum surrounding bird-safe design.