“They didn’t need an organization or regulations telling them to make a bird-friendly stadium,” Rebeccah Sanders, vice president of the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi Flyway for Audubon. But it’s going above and beyond the rules anyway. Increasingly, architects are incorporating bird-friendly elements into their designs, homeowners are marking their windows and sliding-glass doors to make them less deadly, and cities and states-including Minnesota-are instituting bird-friendly building codes.Īllianz Field isn’t receiving any public funding and thus isn’t subject to Minnesota’s code, which went into effect in 2012. Paul and Minneapolis. It makes for a perfect storm, says Christine Sheppard, director of the American Bird Conservancy’s Bird Collisions Program: “Birds and water and migration and buildings is always a dangerous combination.”īird strikes are a serious problem, but not an intractable one: Over the past quarter century, as awareness of the threat posed by buildings has grown, multiple collision-prevention products have hit the market, most of which are designed to make glass apparent to birds. In autumn huge concentrations barrel straight down from the boreal forest, pausing to rest and refuel along the Mississippi River, which cuts through St. Here in the Twin Cities, hundreds of thousands of migratory birds representing more than 300 species pass through during the spring and fall. Most of the animals that fly full-speed into windows are passerines-perching birds such as orioles and warblers-and most strikes occur during migration. Reflections in glass windows create the deadly illusion of sky or vegetation, and birds simply don’t see transparent barriers such as the walls of atria and walkways. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that since McGuire first began planning the Loons’ new stadium in late 2015, he’s taken birds into consideration, striving to build a structure that pleases the fan base while preventing species like those orioles from crashing into it.Īs many as a billion birds die every year in North America from colliding with buildings. “Once you start looking at birds and butterflies, you see the world differently,” he says. “Monarchs are back-they’re having a good year,” he says, pointing to a flitting burst of orange at my feet that I awkwardly sidestep. McGuire, a trained medical doctor and former CEO of UnitedHealth Group, has long been captivated by winged creatures. “I spent the morning getting the mealworms ready, just in case some are still moving through,” he says. Not the Loons, as fans might expect-after all, that’s the nickname of Minnesota United FC-but rather orioles: The birds are passing through on their annual long-haul journeys south, and McGuire likes to put out protein-packed morsels to help fuel the neotropical migrants’ treks. Amid the clanking, beeping, and general hullabaloo, managing partner Bill McGuire is talking about birds. Paul, the soon-to-be new home of Minnesota’s professional soccer team. Typical design configurations include punched openings, single-story, and multi-story applications.On a postcard-perfect morning in September, construction is underway at Allianz Field in St. Panels are available in different thicknesses and may be customized to accommodate a variety of head and sill conditions. Kalwall structural sandwich panels can be either flat or curved. Wall systems are useful for facade applications that do not need to unitize fixed or operable glazing or louvers with translucent panels. The glass prisms refract sunlight to provide a balanced, diffuse wash of glare-free light. Kalwall is a translucent, structural sandwich panel which uses prismatic glass fibers embedded in the panels face sheets.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |