Was this really necessary?
According to the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors (CBCM), a volunteer conservation project dedicated to the protection of migratory birds, the dead bodies s of at least 1,000 small birds, including Tennessee warblers, hermit thrush, and American woodcocks were found around Chicago’s McCormick Place, the largest convention center in North America. Douglas Stotz, a conservation ecologist with the Chicago-based Field Museum, told NPR, “In one night we had a year’s worth of death.” Typically between 1,000 and 2,000 birds die each year from flying into the building, which is a bird-killer due to its thick, mostly glass walls. The number of deaths is probably much higher, because many birds continue to fly after suffering serious collision then die hours later, far from the scene of the crime.
Experts estimate that about one billion birds die every year due to collisions with man-made buildings, and those covered in glass are the greatest culprits. This glass building was built in a location where collisions are particularly likely because Chicago is in the middle of a heavily traveled migration route for birds flying from Canada en route to South and Central America.
This unusual event, like so many other tragedies, occurred because of a confluence of unrelated factors: in this case, it was migration time and McCormick Place was hosting an event that required most of its lights to be on. Studies have shown that shutting off just half the lights in large glass buildings can reduce collisions significantly, by 6 to 11 times. In addition, a storm was over the city, making many birds fly lower.
Yes, “it’s just birds,” but it is also the kind of tunnel-vision planning that has caused many human disasters, like the Maui wildfires and the New Orleans flooding from Hurricane Katrina. There are ways to design attractive buildings that won’t kill thousands of birds each year; its just that nobody cared enough to think about it.
And people wonder why this kind of thing happens:
Ethics Alarms 
I would be interested in the statistics surrounding the death of creatures from wind turbines and solar panels.
Lefty believes that there’s an INCONVENIENT TRUTH better left unsaid.
Good thing that’s the only knock on Green Energy…right…?
PWS
It’s a hideous structure. Art and Architecture should pursue the true, the good and the beautiful. If post-modern architects had pursued the beautiful in designing this building (but they can’t because post-modernism is all about elevating the ugly) then we wouldn’t have this problem.