The problem stems from the way glass reflects green spaces surrounding them. Recent advancements in data and social media tracking have combined with architectural studies have been able to successfully produce guidelines which recommend a wide array of interventions like ceramic frits, visual dot patterns and solar shades that have been successfully demonstrated in retrofit projects such as the Javits Center. 

Annual bird deaths are currently estimated to be between 100 million and 1 billion globally. Initiatives from Ennead and others have been instrumental in protecting avian annihilation, though animal rights activists continue to argue that the preventative measures are not nearly widespread enough — especially in large cities like New York. 

“Every project we work on, guess what? There’s a giant plate of glass, and the client says, we want some landscape here,” SCAPE founder Kate Orff told Bloombeg. “Over the past decade, Manhattan has been remade as a giant bird killer.”