Bird-Friendly Glass Designed With Help From Spiders

by Jeff Kart, Bay City, Michigan

Photos from Arnold Glas

There's a terrible feeling you get when a bird smacks into a window, at the office or at your home. "What was that?!" You look outside, and see a dead or injured bird on the ground. Birds can't see glass, and windows on buildings are a major cause of avian fatalities around the world. But it doesn't have to be that way. There's such a thing as bird friendly glass, believe it or not. A German company called Arnold Glas makes Ornilux, and recently collected an international design award for its spider-web inspired product.

Estimates are that more than 100 million birds die every year in the United States from collisions with windows. The number is about 250,000 a day in Europe, according to Arnold Glas. A special ultraviolet reflective coating makes the Ornilux glass visible to birds, but doesn't obstruct the view for us humans.

The latest version of the glass, called Ornilux Mikado, received the "red dot" award this year from the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen in Essen, Germany. Judges noted that the glass uses the same techniques that spiders use to keep birds from flying through and destroying their webs.

"The highly effective coating which, when looked at against a backlight, seems like a randomly unfolding layer of the game Mikado pick-up sticks, is barely visible to humans and integrates seamlessly into architecture ..."

Credit: Orin Zebest

The glass was developed in conjuction with the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, which tested Ornilux on Central European garden birds and found they recognize it better than ordinary glass. The coating reduces bird strikes by an estimated 75 percent, is more effective than stickers and also helps insulate a building, Arnold Glas says.

The glass is making its way to the states. The Detroit Audubon Society is one of the latest organizations to highlight the product.

The first installation of Ornilux was in the spring of 2006, during the modernization of the 100-year-old enclosed swimming pool in the German city of Plauen. Courtesy Arnold Glas

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Building Homes out of recycled GLASS

Simon Parrish says he has spent about 20 years developing a method of housing construction that can stand up to just about anything. Now, he is letting the rest of the world know about it.

Parrish is production director for the Ambiente brand of manufactured housing. Ambiente is a division of Abersham Commercial Services LLC, based in the Town of Brookfield, Wis.

A key ingredient of Ambiente's houses is waste glass.

In a process that was developed and eventually brought to market by Parrish and his father, Malcolm, waste glass is transformed into a very fine powder similar to sand. It is then combined with a resin to form reinforced wall sections that are resistant to fire, water and mold.

They are also engineered to withstand hurricanes and earthquakes.

"It's absolutely the best material to make a house from," Simon Parrish said.

The process is also environmentally friendly. "Each house has 13 tons of waste glass in it," he said.

There is no wood or metal in the house. Channels for plumbing and electrical wiring are built into the panels.

Once manufactured, houses are shipped out as kits to be assembled at a construction site.

Fine-tuning the manufacturing process has brought the price of the product in line with traditional housing construction, Parrish said.

The company is selling into a $5.3 billion market, according to the Manufactured Housing Institute, a Virginia-based trade association.

Each of the Ambiente houses is reinforced with 5/8-inch flexible rods. "Weight for weight, their tensile strength is stronger than steel," Parrish said.

Those rods _ a skeleton of sorts _ help make the buildings resistant to the weather.

Parrish said he is seeking to attract the interest of the U.S. military, where housing that is resistant to small-arms fire is needed.

"We can really go anywhere in terms of what our customers need," he said.

The company this week has been holding an open house, inviting customers and potential customers to its factory to take a look at its work.

Among the product's features is resistance to hurricanes, Parrish said.

"Hurricane-resistance is all about keeping the roof attached to the house," he said. The flexible glass rods that run the length and width of the house help keep the roofs attached, Parrish said.

Those rods also flex and sway, giving them earthquake-resistant properties, he added.

Finding investors to fund the process of developing and bringing the product to market has been the biggest challenge, Parrish said.

The company produced its first house 15 years ago. Since then, Parrish has set about fine-tuning the manufacturing process.

Machinery and automation helped bring the manufacturing costs down, and the product is ready for a large market.

"It's just naturally evolved to where it is today," Parrish said.

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