Man Versus Bird On Prospect Park
Richard Meier’s On Prospect Park may have been a welcome addition to the neighborhood for modern architecture buffs and the moneyed set who could pony up a million bucks for a one-bedroom apartment, but it hasn’t been such good news for the birds who call the park home. “An all-glass building adjacent to the park…
Richard Meier’s On Prospect Park may have been a welcome addition to the neighborhood for modern architecture buffs and the moneyed set who could pony up a million bucks for a one-bedroom apartment, but it hasn’t been such good news for the birds who call the park home. “An all-glass building adjacent to the park is a deathtrap for birds,” said Glenn Phillips, executive director of NYC Audubon. “The design is a set-up. It’s putting huge, uninterrupted, solid panes of glass adjacent to a landscape, and that’s a recipe for disaster.” Then again, in the wake of the Flight 1549 disaster, there have been reports that the bird population is too great, though we doubt it’s Canadian geese that are meeting their maker on the plate-glass walls.
On Prospect Park a Bird Killer [NY Post]
Photo by j.morefield
‘The views of the park must be delicious.’
Not if you’re flying away from the park!
so much for the bird’s eye view. and yeah, blame Canada.
The views of the park must be delicious.
I passed that building driving through the circle this weekend – amazing how clear the glass is and how many apartments you can see into. It must be nice at times but also pretty brutal when the sun is shining in. Maybe looks nice as a concept but seems to have a lot of drawbacks.
‘The design is a set-up’
Yes, architects sit at their drafting tables ‘hhmmm, let’s design a building so it’s a ‘deathtrap for birds’…and we’ll design a built-in wiper and a slide down shoot into each window.
I don’t know much about Canadian Geese, but like anything Canadian, I’m sure they’re dense 🙂
Good question SS. I don’t know, but, FWIW, I DO know Glenn Phillips (from when he was the director of the Prospect Park Audubon Center) and I don’t think he’s someone who’d indulge in baseless speculation.
And, who cleans the windows??
So, have any actual bird-deaths-by-window-crash been confirmed, or is OPP merely a theoretical deathtrap?
This could have been avoided. There is glass available that is visible to birds and averts these avian deaths. I don’t imagine that such considerations are important though, when you’re chief concern is “architecture as art” [and fleecing those dumb enough to consider this bland box in that category].