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I worked in a building that attempted to address this. The three-story glass lobby had its glass wall raked outwards by 30*. If you approached the glass from
by sandworm101 3y ago
I worked in a building that attempted to address this. The three-story glass lobby had its glass wall raked outwards by 30*. If you approached the glass from inside then your feet would contact it before your face, which really helped at night when outside was brighter than the interior. And birds on the outside would see a reflection of the ground rather than transparent glass. All seemed good. Until a convention of blind people booked the lobby for a meeting. When they approached the building from the outside, their canes did not detect the glass wall prior to their faces smacking into it. We hurriedly erected foot-high barriers so their canes has something to see before impact.
- pfannkuchen 3y agoDo blind people not have feet? I’m confused by the geometry of this story.
- joe_guy 3y agoOn the inside your feet would meet the wall first. On the outside your head would. They were outside.
- constantly 3y agoThey’re talking about the two groups approaching the raked wall from the inside versus the outside.
- pfannkuchen 3y agoAh I missed that thanks!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- alexvoda 3y agoThe ground floor really doesn't need to be like the rest.
- hinkley 3y agoMaybe 30° is too aggressive. 10-15 probably suffices and is still cane compatible. Plus no assholes trying to climb the glass on the inside.
- konstantinua00 3y agohuh, if anything, I wouldn't have imagined birds smacking into windows on first floor...
- Jorge1o1 3y agoMany buildings are deliberately designed with mirrored glass on the first floor and lots of trees so that they can "blend in" with the urban landscape and look more "natural", less "artificial". What's interesting is that what we as humans consider more natural is actually antithetical to nature, because when the birds see the reflected trees, they can't parse that it's a reflection and fly straight into it -- leading to bird deaths.
- KineticLensman 3y agoYes birds mainly fly into my house windows when they see good reflections of the trees in the garden, in the windows.
- KolmogorovComp 3y agoThe Toronto Best Practice for Bird-Friendly building design [0] states that “due to the lack of scientific evidence supporting its effectiveness, angled glass is no longer an acceptable way of compliance [for bird safety]”. [0] https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/8d1c-Bird-Friendly-Best-Practices-Glass.pdf https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/8d1c-Bird-... Page 30.
- yoyopa 3y agothere's supposed to be a cane detection rail if the overhead surface is less than 7 feet